Elastic Stack on Docker

Preconfigured Security, Tools, and Self-Monitoring

Configured to be ready to be used for Log, Metrics, APM, Alerting, Machine Learning, and Security (SIEM) usecases.

Introduction

Elastic Stack (ELK) Docker Composition, preconfigured with Security, Monitoring, and Tools; Up with a Single Command.

Suitable for Demoing, MVPs and small production deployments.

Stack Version: 9.4.2 🎉 - Based on Official Elastic Docker Images

You can change Elastic Stack version by setting ELK_VERSION in .env file and rebuild your images. Any version >= 9.0.0 is compatible with this template.

⚠️ Upgrading from 8.x? See the Upgrade Notes section below for breaking changes and migration steps.

Main Features 📜

• Configured as a Production Single Node Cluster. (With a multi-node cluster option for experimenting).
• Security Enabled By Default.
• Configured to Enable:
  • Logging & Metrics Ingestion
    • Option to collect logs of all Docker Containers running on the host. via mise run elk:collect-docker-logs.
  • APM
  • Alerting
  • Machine Learning
  • Anomaly Detection
  • SIEM (Security information and event management).
  • Enabling Trial License
• Use Docker Compose and .env to configure your entire stack parameters.
• Persist Elasticsearch's Keystore and SSL Certifications.
• Self-Monitoring Metrics Enabled (using Metricbeat for ES 9+).
• Prometheus Exporters for Stack Metrics.
• Embedded Container Healthchecks for Stack Images.

More points

And comparing Elastdocker and the popular deviantony/docker-elk

Automatic Docker Container Log Collection

Collect logs from all Docker containers on your host with a single command:

mise run elk:collect-docker-logs

Filebeat automatically discovers containers, parses logs, and ships them to Elasticsearch. View and analyze everything in Kibana with zero configuration.

Requirements

• Docker 20.05 or higher with Docker Compose v2
• 4GB RAM (For Windows and MacOS make sure Docker's VM has more than 4GB+ memory.)
• mise 2026.9.13 or newer. All stack commands are mise tasks.

brew install mise                   # or: curl https://mise.run | sh
echo 'eval "$(mise activate zsh)"' >> ~/.zshrc   # bash: mise activate bash
mise doctor                         # confirm the install is healthy

Setup

1. Clone the Repository, and allow its mise config to load

   git clone https://github.com/sherifabdlnaby/elastdocker.git
   cd elastdocker
   mise trust
   

2. Initialize Elasticsearch Keystore and TLS Self-Signed Certificates

   mise run elk:setup
   

   For Linux's docker hosts only. By default virtual memory is not enough so run the next command as root sysctl -w vm.max_map_count=262144

3. Start Elastic Stack

   mise run elk       # <OR>  docker compose up -d
   

4. Visit Kibana at https://localhost:5601 or https://<your_public_ip>:5601

   Default Username: elastic, Password: changeme

   • Notice that Kibana is configured to use HTTPS, so you'll need to write https:// before localhost:5601 in the browser.
   • Modify .env file for your needs, most importantly ELASTIC_PASSWORD that setup your superuser elastic's password, ELASTICSEARCH_HEAP & LOGSTASH_HEAP for Elasticsearch & Logstash Heap Size.

Whatever your Host (e.g AWS EC2, Azure, DigitalOcean, or on-premise server), once you expose your host to the network, ELK component will be accessible on their respective ports. Since the enabled TLS uses a self-signed certificate, it is recommended to SSL-Terminate public traffic using your signed certificates.

🏃🏻‍♂️ To start ingesting logs, you can start by running mise run elk:collect-docker-logs which will collect your host's container logs.

Additional Commands

All stack commands live under the elk: namespace. Run mise tasks to list them, and mise run <task> --help to see a task's arguments (e.g. mise run elk:logs kibana tails one service).

mise run elk:monitoring

mise run elk:collect-docker-logs

mise run elk:all

mise run elk:nodes

mise run elk:build

mise run elk:down

mise run elk:prune

Moving from make

The Makefile is gone; the stack now needs mise (see Requirements). Each old command maps to a mise task with the same compose files, flags, and services:

elk:rm and elk:prune ask for confirmation; pass -y before the task name to skip it (mise run -y elk:prune).

Configuration

• Some Configuration are parameterized in the .env file.
  • ELASTIC_PASSWORD, user elastic's password (default: changeme pls).
  • ELK_VERSION Elastic Stack Version (default: 9.4.2)
  • ELASTICSEARCH_HEAP, how much Elasticsearch allocate from memory (default: 1GB -good for development only-)
  • LOGSTASH_HEAP, how much Logstash allocate from memory.
  • Other configurations which their such as cluster name, and node name, etc.
• Elasticsearch Configuration in elasticsearch.yml at ./elasticsearch/config.
• Logstash Configuration in logstash.yml at ./logstash/config/logstash.yml.
• Logstash Pipeline in main.conf at ./logstash/pipeline/main.conf.
• Kibana Configuration in kibana.yml at ./kibana/config.
• Metricbeat Configuration in metricbeat.yml at ./metricbeat/config (for Stack Monitoring in ES 9+).

Setting Up Keystore

You can extend the Keystore generation script by adding keys to ./setup/keystore.sh script. (e.g Add S3 Snapshot Repository Credentials)

To Re-generate Keystore:

mise run elk:keystore

Notes

• ⚠️ Elasticsearch HTTP layer is using SSL, thus mean you need to configure your elasticsearch clients with the CA in secrets/certs/ca/ca.crt, or configure client to ignore SSL Certificate Verification (e.g --insecure in curl).

• Adding Two Extra Nodes to the cluster will make the cluster depending on them and won't start without them again.

• The stack is driven by mise tasks; run mise tasks to list them.

• Elasticsearch will save its data to a volume named elasticsearch-data

• Elasticsearch Keystore (that contains passwords and credentials) and SSL Certificate are generated in the ./secrets directory by the setup command.

• Make sure to run mise run elk:setup if you changed ELASTIC_PASSWORD and to restart the stack afterwards.

• For Linux Users it's recommended to set the following configuration (run as root)

  sysctl -w vm.max_map_count=262144
  

  By default, Virtual Memory is not enough.

Working with Elastic APM

After completing the setup step, you will notice a container named apm-server which gives you deeper visibility into your applications and can help you to identify and resolve root cause issues with correlated traces, logs, and metrics.

Authenticating with Elastic APM

In order to authenticate with Elastic APM, you will need the following:

• The value of ELASTIC_APM_SECRET_TOKEN defined in .env file as we have secret token enabled by default
• The ability to reach port 8200
• Install elastic apm client in your application e.g. for NodeJS based applications you need to install elastic-apm-node
• Import the package in your application and call the start function, In case of NodeJS based application you can do the following:

const apm = require('elastic-apm-node').start({
  serviceName: 'foobar',
  secretToken: process.env.ELASTIC_APM_SECRET_TOKEN,

  // https is enabled by default as per elastdocker configuration
  serverUrl: 'https://localhost:8200',
})

Make sure that the agent is started before you require any other modules in your Node.js application - i.e. before express, http, etc. as mentioned in Elastic APM Agent - NodeJS initialization

For more details or other languages you can check the following:

• APM Agents in different languages

Monitoring The Cluster

Via Stack Monitoring (Metricbeat)

Elasticsearch 9+ uses Metricbeat for Stack Monitoring (the recommended approach). When you start monitoring with mise run elk:monitoring, Metricbeat will collect metrics from all stack components and send them to Elasticsearch.

Head to Stack Monitoring tab in Kibana to see cluster metrics for all stack components.

Architecture Change in ES 9:

• ES 8.x and earlier: Used internal xpack.monitoring for self-monitoring
• ES 9.x: Uses external Metricbeat collection (more scalable and reliable)

In Production, cluster metrics should be shipped to another dedicated monitoring cluster.

Via Prometheus Exporters

If you started Prometheus Exporters using mise run elk:monitoring command. Prometheus Exporters will expose metrics at the following ports.

Note: Elasticsearch Exporter uses updated flags for ES 9 compatibility (--es.indices instead of deprecated --collector.indices).

Upgrade Notes from 8.x to 9.x

8.17.0 → 8.19.x (run Upgrade Assistant) → 9.x

Development

The repo uses mise to run the stack, pin the linters/formatters, and wire git hooks, so everyone lints with the same tool versions as CI. Install it per Requirements.

Set up the toolchain once:

mise trust      # allow this repo's mise config to load
mise run setup  # check prerequisites, install the pinned tools; git hooks self-install

Setup first runs mise doctor project, which checks the prerequisites mise can't install (e.g. a running Docker engine) and prints how to fix any that fail. Run it again anytime to diagnose your machine.

Everyday commands:

On commit, hk formats and lints your staged files; a push runs the slower gates. CI runs both as mise run check, so lint problems surface before review. Need to bypass it for a WIP commit? git commit --no-verify. Tools and tasks live in mise.toml, the hook pipeline in .config/hk.pkl.

License

MIT License Copyright (c) 2022-2026 Sherif Abdel-Naby

Contribution

PR(s) are Open and Welcomed. Run mise run check before opening one (see Development).