ELK: Pointing Kibana to a Client Node

elasticsearch-logoKibana is the end user web application that allows us to query Elasticsearch data and create dashboards that can be used for analysis and decision making.

Although Kibana can be pointed to any of the nodes in your Elasticsearch cluster, the best way to distribute requests across the nodes is to use a non-master, non-data Client node.  Client nodes have the following properties set in elasticsearch.yml:

cluster.name: mycluster
node.master: false
node.data: false

A client node is joined to the cluster, but has very light requirements because it holds no responsibility except to forward requests to the appropriate data nodes.  Because it is so light, you typically deploy Kibana on the same host, and in kibana.yml, point it to the local client node:

elasticsearch_url: "http://localhost:9200"

Now the client node will act as a “smart router” and distribute queries across the cluster.

 

REFERENCES

https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/kibana/4.2/production.html

https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/2.0//modules-node.html#client-node