Instead of writing about what exactly ELK is, let me state the need and use cases for it.
In a very naive scenario, you have one server and lots of log messages generated by your application and system which are crucial to look at once something goes wrong. Now there are basically two problems with it:
In a previous article, we explained the importance of monitoring the performance of your servers. Keeping tabs on metrics such as CPU, memory, disk usage, uptime, network traffic, and swap usage will help you gauge the general health of your environment as well as provide the context you need to troubleshoot and solve production issues.
In the past, command line tools, such as top, htop, or nstat, might have been enough, but in today’s modern IT environments, a more centralized approach for monitoring must be implemented.
