D.1. Bigdesk: visualize your cluster

Bigdesk, shown in figure D.1, is the creation of Lukáš Vlček and has provided a solid monitoring plugin user interface since version 0.17.0 of Elasticsearch. Bigdesk offers live charts and statistics, allowing you to visualize changes occurring across your cluster in real time.

Figure D.1. Website: http://bigdesk.org/License: Apache License v2.0

One of the most desirable features of Bigdesk, and a rarity among most of the available plugins, is the ability to visualize your cluster topography. The cluster you built using the get-together application in the book is shown in figure D.2.

Figure D.2. Bigdesk makes visualizing the get-together cluster easy.

This feature is rather fine-grained in that it allows you to see nodes, shards, and indices deployed across your cluster in great detail.

Because Bigdesk communicates via the Elasticsearch REST API, you can use it in three ways:

As a server-side installed plugin

From the Bigdesk.org website: http://bigdesk.org

Downloaded and installed locally