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Get started with Elastic Observability Serverless Logs Essentials

Serverless

Note

Use this guide to get started with the Logs Essentials feature tier of Elastic Observability Serverless. Refer to the main Observability getting started docs to get started with Elastic Observability Serverless Complete, which includes APM and Infrastructure metrics. The Elastic Observability Serverless feature tiers page details the difference between tiers.

New to Elastic Observability Serverless Logs Essentials? Discover more about its features and how to get started. The following instructions guide you through setting up your first Elastic Observability Logs Essentials deployment, collecting log data, and exploring your data.

Learn how to create an Elastic Observability Serverless project and use Elastic Observability to gain deeper insight into the behavior of your applications and systems.

  1. Create an Observability project

    An Elastic Observability Serverless project allows you to run Elastic Observability Serverless in an autoscaled and fully-managed environment, where you don’t have to manage the underlying Elasticsearch cluster or Kibana instances.

    Steps for creating a project
    Note

    The Admin role or higher is required to create projects. Refer to Assign user roles and privileges.

    1. Navigate to cloud.elastic.co and log in to your account, or create one.

    2. Select Create serverless project.

    3. Under Elastic for Observability, select Next.

    4. Enter a name for your project.

    5. (Optional) Under Settings you can change the following:

      • Cloud provider: The cloud platform where you’ll deploy your project. We currently support Amazon Web Services (AWS).
      • Region: The region where your project will live.

    6. Select Edit settings, and select Observability Logs Essentials.

    7. Select Create serverless project. It takes a few minutes to create your project.

    8. When the project is ready, click Continue.

  2. Collect infrastructure logs

    Bring logs from your hosts and services into Elastic Observability to monitor the health and performance of your infrastructure. You can collect this data from hosts, containers, Kubernetes, and Cloud services.

    Steps for collecting infrastructure logs and metrics

    Elastic Observability can collect logs from hosts through the Elastic Distribution of OpenTelemetry (EDOT) Collector or the Elastic Agent.

    1. Select Add data from the main menu and then select Host.
    2. Select one of these options:
      • OpenTelemetry: Logs: Collect native OpenTelemetry logs.
      • Elastic Agent: Logs: Bring data from Elastic integrations.
    3. Follow the instructions for your platform.

    For an overview of the EDOT, refer to Elastic Distribution of OpenTelemetry (EDOT).

    Elastic Observability can collect logs from Kubernetes through the Elastic Distribution of OpenTelemetry (EDOT) Collector or the Elastic Agent.

    1. Select Add data from the main menu and then select Kubernetes.
    2. Select one of these options:
      • OpenTelemetry: Logs: Collect native OpenTelemetry metrics and logs.
      • Elastic Agent: Logs: Bring data from Elastic integrations.
    3. Follow the instructions for your platform.

    For an overview of EDOT, refer to Elastic Distribution of OpenTelemetry (EDOT).

    Elastic Observability can collect logs from cloud services through Elastic integrations.

    1. Select Add data from the main menu and then select Cloud.
    2. Select your Cloud provider to view the collection of integrations available for that provider.
    3. Select the integration you want to add.
    4. Select Add.

  3. Explore logs in Discover

    Discover lets you quickly search and filter your log data, get information about the structure of your log fields, and display findings in a visualization. Instead of having to log into different servers, change directories, and view individual files, all your logs are available in a single view.

    For more information on exploring your logs in Discover, refer to Explore logs in Discover.

  4. Create your first dashboards

    Elastic provides a wide range of prebuilt dashboards for visualizing observability data from a variety of sources. These dashboards are loaded automatically when you install Elastic integrations. You can also create new dashboards and visualizations based on your data views.

    To create a new dashboard, select Create Dashboard and begin adding visualizations. You can create charts, graphs, maps, tables, and other types of visualizations from your data, or you can add visualizations from the library. You can also add other types of panels, such as filters and controls.

    For more information about creating dashboards, refer to Create your first dashboard.

  5. Set up alerts

    Elastic Observability lets you define rules of different types which detect complex conditions and trigger relevant actions. Elastic Observability can send alerts to email, Slack, and other third-party systems. Refer to Create and manage rules to get started.

Use these resources to learn more about Observability or get started in a different way.

Quickstarts are compact hands-on guides that help you experiment with Elastic Observability features. Each quickstart provides a highly opinionated, fast path to data ingestion, with minimal configuration required.

Browse the Elastic Observability quickstarts to get started with specific use cases.

Many Observability integrations are available to collect and process your data. Refer to Elastic integrations for more information.