Kibana - do I need to install XPack?

Elastic Stack Kibana
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More specifically, I have installled XPACK on ElasticSearch. Looking at a few posts, I guess I got muddled since some people have claimed that Kibana will use ElasticSearch's XPACK for security(for example, user names) and if XPACK is installed on ES, Kibana can leverage those same security credentials in ElasticSearch. (I dont; want to use the default kibana username and password that we configure in the Kibana.yml - rather use the security i define in ElasticSearch).

  • So, would I need to install XPACK separately in Kibana if ElasticSearch has XPACK installed?
  • If yes, does the licensing costs change if kibana also needs to install XPACK?
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Hey there,

Technically speaking I suppose it might be possible to use the security provided on ES by X-Pack without needing to install it on Kibana too, but it would probably require a lot of hacking and I'm not sure how you would go about it.

But realistically, such a solution wouldn't be supported by Elastic and I think it would probably be a significant maintenance burden. I'd definitely recommend installing X-Pack on both Kibana and ES if you'd like to use its security features.

To answer your questions, X-Pack is intended as a full-stack solution, so your X-Pack license applies to Elasticsearch, Kibana, Beats, Logstash, and APM. Go to our subscriptions page to download a free Basic license (no security) or request a free trial for the more advanced licenses (with security).

Hope this helps,
CJ

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