# Beats to Logstash?

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/beats-to-logstash/200503>\
**Category:** Beats\
**Created:** [September 20, 2019, 11:55pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/beats-to-logstash/200503 "2019-09-20T23:55:34Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![SteveP](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dfb087/32.png) [@SteveP](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/SteveP)\
**Post date:** [September 20, 2019, 11:55pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/beats-to-logstash/200503/1 "2019-09-20T23:55:34Z")

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If I am taking in data from Beats do I need to go through Logstash to Elasticsearch or can I go directly to Elasticsearch and then visualize it in Kibana? I am bit confused as to how Logstash fits into Beats.

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**Author:** ![YuWatanabe](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/yuwatanabe/32/13259_2.png) [@YuWatanabe](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/YuWatanabe)\
**Post date:** [September 21, 2019, 12:03am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/beats-to-logstash/200503/2 "2019-09-21T00:03:07Z")

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You could do _both_ .

(a) beats =\> logstash (beats input) =\> elasticsearch  
(b) beats =\> elasticsearch

In my opinion,

If you need to parse fields from your data, I think (a) is more flexible. However, you will have extra software in your pipeline though.

For (b) , you need _ingest pipeline_ which you will construct using json syntax. If the pipeline become complex, you will have hard time creating it.

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**Author:** ![SteveP](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dfb087/32.png) [@SteveP](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/SteveP)\
**Post date:** [September 21, 2019, 1:34am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/beats-to-logstash/200503/3 "2019-09-21T01:34:13Z")

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Right now I am intaking syslog, but I can see this growing if it works well.

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [October 19, 2019, 3:34am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/beats-to-logstash/200503/4 "2019-10-19T03:34:20Z")

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