Getting Started with Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes

In the modern DevOps world, ELK (Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana) plays a crucial role by enabling the search, analysis, and visualization of large data sets. These capabilities are essential for troubleshooting issues, gaining insights, and ensuring the security of systems.

There are several deployment options for the ELK Stack, depending on a team's requirements and the desired level of infrastructure management. One of the deployment options is Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes (ECK), an official Kubernetes Operator provided by Elastic. Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes simplifies the deployment and management of Elastic Stack components within Kubernetes clusters.

This blog explains the process of installing Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes on an Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster using YAML templates.

Pre-requisites:

• Azure Kubernetes Cluster

• Full administrative access to the Kubernetes Cluster

• Workstation with kubectl installed 

• We can use Shell or AKS "Run Command" to run installation commands.

Open Shell or AKS Run Command. Run below command to install ECK. 

kubectl create -f https://download.elastic.co/downloads/eck/3.0.0/crds.yaml

 Once the command is executed successfully, you will find the custom resources in the AKS cluster.

Next, Install the ECK operator along with RBAC rules by running the command below. By default, the ECK operator runs in the elastic-system namespace. Further, it is recommended not to deploy application workloads in the elastic-system namespace.

kubectl apply -f https://download.elastic.co/downloads/eck/3.0.0/operator.yaml

Now, the operator is being created. Run the command below to check if the operator is ready to use.

kubectl get -n elastic-system pods

If the operator is ready to use, you will see logs similar to those shown in the below image.

ECK has been deployed, and it is ready for further ELK deployments. Let's learn how to deploy an Elasticsearch cluster and Kibana in the next few blog posts.