# ELK Integration for Logging

> Learn how to integrate the ELK (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) stack for centralized logging and log analysis in KrakenD API Gateway

Source: https://www.krakend.io/docs/enterprise/logging/elk-integration/

KrakenD can push logs to external services; a good example is an integration with the ELK Stack (**Elastic + Logstash + Kibana**). The ELK integration allows you to have KrakenD pushing logs to your Elastic server and **visualize them through a Kibana dashboard**.

The Kibana dashboard lets you monitor the logging activity of the gateway and identify problems quickly. The included dashboard is a starting point that provides typical graphs and metrics, but you can extend it as per your needs and add other metrics to watch.

## ELK Configuration

The configuration you need on your `krakend.json` to enable ELK integration is:

```json
{
  "$schema": "https://www.krakend.io/schema/v3.0/krakend.json",
  "version": 4,
  "extra_config": {
    "telemetry/logging": {
      "level": "DEBUG",
      "@comment": "Prefix should always be inside [] to keep the grok expression working",
      "prefix": "[KRAKEND]",
      "syslog": false,
      "stdout": true
    },
    "telemetry/gelf": {
      "address": "logstash:12201",
      "enable_tcp": false
    }
  }
}
```

There’s nothing else on KrakenD that you need to do.

Where are the logs now?

When you enable the ELK integration, you will stop seeing the application logs on `stdout` as KrakenD pushes them to the ELK stack.

## Logstash and Kibana configuration

The configuration files you need for Logstash and Kibana can be downloaded from the [Telemetry Dashboards repository](https://github.com/krakend/telemetry-dashboards).

[Download ELK configuration files](https://github.com/krakend/telemetry-dashboards "Download ELK configuration files")

### Logstash

The `logstash.conf` file includes an example of a Logstash configuration. First, change the **hostname** of your Elasticsearch server and any custom ports you might use. Then, start Logstash with this configuration to properly ingest KrakenD logs.

### Kibana

To import the Kibana dashboard included in the ELK repository above, execute the following command once your Kibana is up and running. Replace `localhost:5601` if needed:

Term 

```
$curl -X POST "localhost:5601/api/saved_objects/_import" -H "kbn-xsrf: true" --form file=@dashboard.ndjson -H "kbn-xsrf: true"
```

## ELK live demo

If you want to see how this works, you can start the [KrakenD Playground](https://www.krakend.io/docs/enterprise/overview/playground/).