No matter what business you run, by having the right tools for your company you can deliver better results and satisfy clients at scale. With the rise in competition, it is important to keep track of changing trends and patterns. Data visualization tools help identify data trends and allow analysts to visualize new patterns.

Today, keeping manual track of large data is impossible. Every professional industry must spend on data visualization tools to prolifically convey their points and get deeper insights into complex data.

Infographics, maps, charts, and graphs are a few mediums through which businesses can visualize their data and get a better understanding of their content. 

Kibana is one popular data visualization and exploration tool that enables organizations to discover trends, change in patterns, and a clear understanding of their logs and time-stamped data.

It comprises some of the powerful features that can make it easy for users to monitor and understand big data. Here, we will discuss Kibana in detail – its features, benefits, use cases, and tools that work best with Kibana.

What is Kibana?

Kibana is an open-source data visualization tool used by most organizations for visualizing logs and time-stamped data. It offers a range of features that allow users to create interactive visualizations as well as dashboards with ease. 

A dashboard can be created by dragging and dropping fields from the left panel onto the right panel, which aids users in generating a chart or graph automatically. Users can also customize the way the dashboard looks by changing the color, size, or shape of a given graph. 

The software is open-source and released under the GNU General Public License v3 (GPLv3), which allows for commercial use of the software without specific license restrictions. Kibana also provides users with a search bar for quickly filtering through their log files.

Most companies use Kibana for application monitoring, operational intelligence, and offering real-time histograms, maps, and other data to platforms like Elastic, formerly known as Elasticsearch, an open search, and analytics engine. The software also comprises advanced applications that help users create dynamic infographics.

It supports various features that aid Elastic in accessing complex data streams faster. Also, users can understand complex data easily through its graphical representation. Another key feature that makes Kibana an exclusive product is sharing tools for visualized data.

Using Kibana, users can explore the Elastic results faster. The software also includes built-in geospatial support and built-in video tutorials that aid Elastic in setting up a data flow. Its visualization user interface helps companies create reports and dashboards from multiple sources. 

Concept of Kibana

Kibana supports multiple applications for general-purpose, Elastic Observability, Elastic Security, and Enterprise Search solutions. As an analyst, you can use most of these applications for analyzing and visualizing data. All these applications share a common concept.

• Discover apps and objects Each page in the Kibana app has a global search bar that allows users to easily find the different apps or saved objects. Use Ctrl+/ on Windows and Linux platforms or Command+/ on macOS for opening the search bar area on your screen.
• Create a Data View to Access Data To access  data, Kibana requires you to create a data view that helps in defining the properties of the fields. Using the data view, you can select the data you want to use, and display the format for each field, point indices, or index aliases by their respective names. It also supports field formats for geopoints and strings.Generally, an administrator creates it when transferring data to Elastic. Users can also use a script that accesses the Kibana API or Stack Management to create or update data views.
• Searching your data Another concept that is common for all Kibana apps is it helps you build search queries in different ways that aid in reducing the count of document matches that you collect from Elastic. The software also offers a time filter, semi-structured search options, and additional filters. When you use the search option, make sure to press the save icon adjacent to the semi-structured search. This feature will help you save or load existing saved queries.
• Setting the Time Range As per this concept, users can display the data only for the specified time range added by them. The time filter is generally used for time-based events or time fields in the data view, but in some cases, it applies to other time fields also. The default time limit is 15 minutes, but you also customize and resubmit the time limit for your data.
• Kibana Query Language To filter Elastic data by means of a free text or file-based search, users exercise a simple syntax – Kibana Query Language (KQL). It is not used to sort or aggregate the data, but instead for filtering the collected information. You can query nested fields and suggest operators or field names as per your requirement. Additionally, it will filter documents for matches and return accurate results.
• Lucene query syntax If you are not interested in Kibana Query Language (KQL) and want to use a syntax for regular expressions or fuzzy term matching, go for Lucene query syntax. Remember, you cannot search nested objects or scripted fields with advanced Lucene features.
• Saving objects Another concept that is common for all apps is saving objects. It allows users to keep a copy of their objects for future use or sharing with team members. Each saved object has a unique and different feature. For example, if you use Discover and save your search queries, you may:
• • Share the search link with other
  • Download it in a CSV format
  • Use the same search query to begin an aggregated visualization
  • Embed the list of results into a dashboard or Canvas

Also, you can save each object with a name, tag, and type of your choice. To open your saved object, use the global search option, it will make the process quick.

Features of Kibana

You can navigate the Elastic Stack or visualize the Elastic data with some of its highly advanced features:

Visualize Data

Kibana supports multiple tools, charts, and maps that make it easy for you to understand the collected data and get a live expression of it.

• Kibana Lens The drag-and-drop feature makes it an easy-to-use application and displays insights in seconds without any requirement for prior experience in Kibana.
• Time Series Visual Builder It offers several pipeline aggregations that aid businesses in displaying their complex data in a meaningful manner.
• Geospatial analysis This feature help predicts, manage, and provide complete data related to slow application response times in different locations, sales analysis, etc.
• Charts Using different charts like line, area, or bar charts you can plat data on the X/Y axis and get a better visual of your collected data or metrics. Heat maps are the ones where the data are represented as colors or gradients.
• Data tables It is another popular form to display your data. You can customize your data tables to sync with your live data.

Data Exploration 

The built-in dashboards help users to explore and visualize network flow data. You can edit, resize, or set up filters and update more features to perform in-depth analysis and gain insights into your data.

• Dashboards Users can generate custom drilldowns between multiple dashboards and save or share them for future use.
• Discover The discovery functions help in exploring data, filtering the search results, and viewing document data. If you have set up the time configuration, you can also display the distribution of documents over time in a histogram.
• Console interface Using the Console interface, users can compose requests and transfer them in a cURL-like syntax to Elastic to view responses.

Pre-configured Dashboards

It also includes preconfigured dashboards that can be used to analyze logs and metrics when using the Elastic Stack.

• Web server modules Users can customize them and easily use them for monitoring their web server log data and system metrics in Kibana. For example, NGINX, IIS, HAProxy, etc.
• Database modules It allows you to keep track of the database as well as queuing system log data and system metrics in Kibana. For example, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, etc.
• Infrastructure modules It allows you to monitor servers in Kibana. For example, Kubernetes, Docker, Windows, etc.

Share and Collaborate Options

The share and collaborate feature supported by the tool makes it easier for users to share visualizations with team members and customers. All you need to do is embed a dashboard and share its link with read-only permissions or other permissions with your team members. You can also export data to PDF, PNG, or CSV files and share them as an attachment.

Alert Options

You can customize the alert option and get an update about the changes in your data.

Advanced Security Features

The security features supported by the Elastic Stack help keep malicious actors at bay. This feature assures customers and executives that their stored data is free from threats and can manage well-intentioned users in a better way. The advanced security features ensure that only authorized users gain access or permission to use the data stored in the Elastic Stack. It supports node authentication certificates, SSL/TLS, etc., and ensures encrypted communications.

Monitoring Features

The monitoring features help gain full visibility into the performance and working of the Elastic stack. It guides about the operation running in Kibana, Logstash, and Elastic as well as aids in creating a visualization. The configuration retention policies supported by the tool also allow you to control time management for data monitoring.

Advantages of Kibana

The data visualization comprises some of the best features that make it one of the best products in the market. It is easy to use and offers tight integration with Elastic, making Kibana a default choice for visualization and exploration of the data. Using the excellent properties, you can gain good benefits from Kibana, including:

• Access to Interactive Charts Kibana allows users to navigate through a large amount of log data and create intuitive charts and reports from the same with a few clicks. It supports drag-and-drop features that aid in zooming in and out of specific data subsets and extracting actionable insights from the collected data.
• Mapping Support The geospatial capabilities supported by the tool allow organizations to collect geographical information and visualize results on maps.
• Offers pre-built aggregations and filters With the help of built-in aggregations and filters, you can run better analyses and use features like histograms, and check trends with a few clicks.
• Dashboard Organizations can set up dashboards and generate quality reports for sharing with team members. You can also save objects in the dashboard for future use. Kibana’s dashboards are customizable, support drag-and-drop features, and are quite easy to use.

Kibana Use Cases

Kibana helps organizations and customers discover what they need faster while making sure that each application operates smoothly and securely.

• Great for Digital customers The Kibana software connects customers with the content they are looking for faster and offers a better digital experience. The search feature available on e-commerce websites can improve ROI and result in client satisfaction. When a customer uses the search feature, you get an idea of what products the customer is looking for and you can tailor them as per their need.
• Aids DevOps Teams in Building Better Applications It can be quite challenging for DevOps teams to build better applications without the right tool. To resolve this issue, many companies are now investing in software like Kibana. Kibana comprises some of the best features that enable companies to build better applications at scale. Observability is a critical component that helps resolve issues across different environments. You can also gain full visibility into multiple environments and detect issues faster. Also, it helps reduce MTTD and MTTR.

Tools that work with Kibana 

Here is a list of tools that you can integrate with Kibana to visualize your data:

• Elastic A distributed search engine that centrally stores data for quick search and powerful analytics. It is a free, open-source Elastic Stack with a large community. Thousands of organizations, including The New York Times, Netflix, Microsoft, Cisco, etc., use the Elastic Stack to search across everything and drive new revenue opportunities. It operates in a distributed environment and helps users balance performance and cost while storing data for fast queries. Users can use Elastic for monitoring logs, infrastructure, endpoint security, maps, and SIEM and get deeper insights into the application performance.
• CELUM Supports integration with the open-source analysis platform Kibana. Kibana collects all the data related to typical activities from CELUM for quick and easy visualization. Once CELUM uses Kibana for visualizations, it navigates the Elastic Stack to learn about the made requests.  Kibana helps display all the data related to his activities and current performance in the form of charts, histograms, etc., for better analysis. Users can also visualize CELUM workflow events with Kibana.
• Cyral Another trusted tool designed to manage infrastructure-as-code workflows, deployment, and availability challenges. It offers granular visibility and enhanced cloud security across all data endpoints. At first, users must add ELK integration in the Cyral UI to share logs with the hosted ELK. Once the integration has been created, you can send the data and use Kibana for visualizing the data.
  
• Beats A free, open-source tool used by single-purpose data shippers. Most companies install the software as agents on their servers to transfer operational information to Logstash or Elastic.

It can also send direct messages to these platforms for visualization by Kibana. These are lightweight data shippers that centralize data in Elastic. With the help of the Metrics and Logs app in Kibana, users can access centralized log analytics faster.

Install and Configure Kibana

In this section, we will install the Elastic Kibana and then add sample data to the Kibana dashboard.

Install ElasticSearch

First, you will need to install some dependencies to your server. You can install them by running the following command:

apt-get install apt-transport-https curl gnupg2 -y

Next, add the ElasticSearch key and repository to your server:

wget -qO - https://artifacts.elastic.co/GPG-KEY-elasticsearch | apt-key add -
echo "deb https://artifacts.elastic.co/packages/8.x-prerelease/apt stable main" | tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/elastic-8.x.list

Next, update the repository cache with the following command:

apt-get update -y

Next, install the ElasticSearch with the following command:

apt-get install elasticsearch -y

Once the installation is completed, start the ElasticSearch service using the following command:

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl start elasticsearch

Next, edit the ElasticSearch configuration file and disable the xpack security:

nano /etc/elasticsearch/elasticsearch.yml

Change the following line:

xpack.security.enabled: false

Save and close the file then restart the ElasticSearch service to apply the changes:

systemctl restart elasticsearch

Next, verify the ElasticSearch with the following command:

curl -X GET "localhost:9200/"

You will get the following output:

{
  "name" : "kibana",
  "cluster_name" : "elasticsearch",
  "cluster_uuid" : "MeL-nfAuTFmwlEw8qzpMww",
  "version" : {
    "number" : "8.0.0-rc2",
    "build_flavor" : "default",
    "build_type" : "deb",
    "build_hash" : "1b6a7ece17463df5ff54a3e1302d825889aa1161",
    "build_date" : "2022-01-31T21:03:07.336372824Z",
    "build_snapshot" : false,
    "lucene_version" : "9.0.0",
    "minimum_wire_compatibility_version" : "7.17.0",
    "minimum_index_compatibility_version" : "7.0.0"
  },
  "tagline" : "You Know, for Search"
}

Install Kibana

Now, install the Kibana by just running the following command:

apt-get install kibana -y

Next, start the Kibana service with the following command:

systemctl start kibana

You can check the status of the Kibana service with the following command:

systemctl status kibana

You should get the following output:

● kibana.service - Kibana
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/kibana.service; disabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Sun 2022-08-28 10:34:09 UTC; 10s ago
       Docs: https://www.elastic.co
   Main PID: 3077 (node)
      Tasks: 11 (limit: 4685)
     Memory: 217.3M
     CGroup: /system.slice/kibana.service
             └─3077 /usr/share/kibana/bin/../node/bin/node /usr/share/kibana/bin/../src/cli/dist
Aug 28 10:34:09 kibana systemd[1]: Started Kibana.

By default, Kibana listens on port 5601 on localhost. To access the Kibana from the remote machine, you will need to edit the Kibana configuration file and change the listening host:

nano /etc/kibana/kibana.yml

Change the following line:

server.host: "your-server-ip"

Save and close the file then restart the Kibana service to apply the changes:

systemctl restart kibana

Access Kibana Dashboard

Now, open your web browser and access the Kibana dashboard using the URL http://your-server-ip:5601. You should see the Kibana welcome page:

Click on Explore on my own. You should see the Kibana dashboard:

Click on the Try sample data. You should see the following page:

Select the Sample eCommerce Order and click on Add data. You should see the eCommerce data on the Kibana dashboard.

Conclusion

Data Visualization tools help analyze data in a better way and enable businesses to make better decisions based on the new data insights. Further, using such tools, you can identify new patterns and errors in the data faster. Kibana is a leading data visualization tool, used by most companies for monitoring and getting a better understanding of their logs and time-stamped data.

Kibana helps search, observe, and protect data. Also, it helps discover hidden insights using charts, maps, and graphs. If you want to monitor the health of your Elastic Stack cluster, it is best to invest in tools like Kibana. Be it structured or unstructured text or numerical data, Kibana can help identify patterns and visualize results faster.

It also updates users on detecting significant shifts and signals in the data. Apart from the few we have talked about, there are many more features supported by the software that makes it one of the best data visualization tools. Users can collect geographical information and also visualize results on maps using Kibana.

In short, Kibana helps turn huge and complex data streams easy to understand through graphic representation. Check out the above-listed features, benefits, and tools that work best with Kibana before coming to a conclusion.