Automate Creation of Dashboards!

[syedsfayaz (fayaz)]

Hi, I have Linux and Windows Servers where I am using filebeat to get data for Tomcat and IIS access logs.

MY index pattern is created by the server name. EX -beats-server-data.

Now I have many linux and windows servers and I want to repeat the same process. Is there a way I can automate this. I don't want to manually create similar dashboard with different index pattern . There should be a way to automate it. Thanks in advance.

[bhavyarm]

Hi,

Filebeat comes with a set of prebuilt dashboards: https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/beats/filebeat/current/load-kibana-dashboards.html

I am also moving your question to beats forum and hopefully somebody will be able to help you there.

Thanks,
Bhavya

[Christian_Dahlqvist]

Creating indices per server name sounds like it could result in a lot of very small indices and shards, which is inefficient and wastes resources. I would generally recommend creating indices per type of data and store data from all sources providing that type of data in the same index. You then typically have a field that indicates where the data comes from which you can filter on. This allows you to have a single dashboard per type of data and add filters if you only want to see data from a specific host.

[syedsfayaz (fayaz)]

@Christian, I like your idea. Will try to follow that. In this case even If I clone an existing dashboard I can just filter it with a new hostname and see relevant data related to that particular host.

Can I have same filebeat index for the data coming from windows and Linux server. Will there be any issue.

• I am using apache2 module for tomcat access logs on linux.
• IIS module for windows access logs.

[syedsfayaz (fayaz)]

@bhavyarm I dont want to use the default dashboards. They are much detailed and not necessary for me. I wanted to customize and only use few widgets.

For Example: I wanted to divide a dashboard for all dev servers and see data related to dev. And Similary I want to categorise it for different environments. I want to just copy the template I created for one env and duplicate it to all other environments.