Integrating Logstash with websphere running in AIX

Elastic Stack Logstash
1

I have a websphere application server running in a AIX machine, and all the log file are configured to fall under (usual) path /opt/..... /Appserver/logs/SystemOut.log.... Now I have successfully installed ELK in one of my windows machine.

Can I have some basic overview of how to integrate logstash with my Websphere running in AIX? or Is it even possible to accomplish that?

2

AIX isn't supported, but since Logstash is JVM-based you can always give it a shot. If there's a Go compiler and runtime for AIX (I don't know the current status but last time I looked there was nothing) you might be able to get Filebeat working.

Perhaps Beaver can be used? It's written in Python so as long as you have a Python interpreter on your server it should work.

3

Hi Magnus,

Thanks for your Guide. Can you please clarify my below ques

Filebeat and Beaver are the logstash agents?
It's like, if I want to connect my Websphere logs to ELK, I need to install this logstash agents in all of my AIX server right?

How many logstash agents are there? and which is the best to use?

4

Filebeat and Beaver are the logstash agents?

"Agent" isn't a frequently used term in the Elastic community nor in the official documentation. Filebeat and Beaver are two programs for shipping log files to Logstash servers and, as such, are usually called shippers.

It's like, if I want to connect my Websphere logs to ELK, I need to install this logstash agents in all of my AIX server right?

Well, you should install something capable of shipping log files over the network. There are many options. Filebeat and Beaver were the two that popped into my mind. NXLog is another one but as I believe it's written in C or C++ I suspect it might be less portable than the other two.

and which is the best to use?

Given your choice of operating system I think you should go for anything that works.

5

Thanks for the update Magnus.

I would like to go with Beaver since WebSphere supports phython and it doesn't need a separate interpreter. But I have never installed any LogShipper in AIX.

I would give a try of installing Beaver in AIX