The first thing we need to do before we can try out the EFK stack is initialize Kibana so it knows what search indices to use in Elasticsearch. Once that is done, we will try out the following, in my experience, common tasks:
- We will start by analyzing of what types of log records Fluentd has collected and stored in Elasticsearch. Kibana has a very useful visualization capability that can be used for this.
- Next, we will learn how to discover log records from different microservices that belong to one and the same processing of an external request to the API. We will use the trace ID in the log records as a correlation ID to find related log records.
- Thirdly, we will learn how to use Kibana to perform root cause analysis, that is, find the actual reason for an error.