Appendix D. Elasticsearch monitoring plugins

The Elasticsearch community offers a wide array of monitoring plugins that make it easier to manage cluster state and indices and to perform queries via attractive user interfaces. Many of these plugins are available freely and are in active development thanks to well-documented plugin and REST APIs and the ever-vibrant Elasticsearch community.

In this section, we’ll cover a few of the most popular plugins available:

Bigdesk

ElasticHQ

Head

Kopf

Elasticsearch Marvel

Each of these plugins is well documented and actively supported by either the open-source community or, in the case of Elasticsearch Marvel or Sematext SPM, Elastic, Inc. and Sematext, Inc., respectively. Often the question of which monitoring or management interface to choose is a personal one. If it’s commercial support you’re looking for, the decision is a binary one. Both Marvel and Sematext, in this regard, are affordable and actively maintained/backed by proven companies. Sematext has the additional benefit of offering more than Elasticsearch monitoring, but unless you’re looking for sitewide monitoring of your infrastructure, the choice becomes clearer. Bigdesk, ElasticHQ, Head, and Kopf share many similarities in functionality, making your decision a bit trickier. Because this batch of solutions is either hosted or installable within minutes, it has been our experience that most users simply try each until they find the one that’s best for them. Sometimes it all comes down to the ease of use of the user interface.