# What is the need of logstash when we can directly forward things to elastic search

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-is-the-need-of-logstash-when-we-can-directly-forward-things-to-elastic-search/39067>\
**Category:** Logstash\
**Created:** [January 13, 2016, 7:17am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-is-the-need-of-logstash-when-we-can-directly-forward-things-to-elastic-search/39067 "2016-01-13T07:17:50Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![elastic-fan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/779978/32.png) [@elastic-fan](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/elastic-fan)\
**Post date:** [January 13, 2016, 7:17am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-is-the-need-of-logstash-when-we-can-directly-forward-things-to-elastic-search/39067/1 "2016-01-13T07:17:50Z")

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What is the need of logstash when we can directly forward things to elastic search, is there any specific reason that we want to use logstash?

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**Author:** ![magnusbaeck](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/magnusbaeck/32/44943_2.png) [@magnusbaeck](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/magnusbaeck)\
**Post date:** [January 13, 2016, 7:33am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-is-the-need-of-logstash-when-we-can-directly-forward-things-to-elastic-search/39067/2 "2016-01-13T07:33:15Z")

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It's not unusual to want to process events in some way (renaming fields, performing DNS lookups, parsing user agent strings, ...). Logstash also has a wide variety of inputs and outputs that Beats (which I assume is what you're talking about) can't match. If you have no such needs then Logstash probably has limited value for you.

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**Author:** ![warkolm](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/warkolm/32/39224_2.png) [@warkolm](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/warkolm)\
**Post date:** [January 14, 2016, 6:05am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-is-the-need-of-logstash-when-we-can-directly-forward-things-to-elastic-search/39067/3 "2016-01-14T06:05:16Z")

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Like Magnus said, you can't do geoip and more processing via beats.

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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:** [July 6, 2017, 5:15am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-is-the-need-of-logstash-when-we-can-directly-forward-things-to-elastic-search/39067/4 "2017-07-06T05:15:46Z")

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