[role="xpack"]
[[es-monitoring]]
= Monitoring {es}

[partintro]
--
{monitoring} enables you to easily monitor the health of your {es} cluster. The
monitoring metrics are collected from each node and stored in {es} indices.

Each {es} node is considered unique based on its persistent UUID, which is
written on first start to its <<path-settings,`path.data`>> directory, which
defaults to `./data`.

All settings associated with {monitoring} in {es} must be set in either the
`elasticsearch.yml` file for each node or, where possible, in the dynamic
cluster settings. For more information, see <<configuring-monitoring>>.

[[es-monitoring-overview]]
{es} is also at the core of {monitoring} across the Elastic Stack. In all cases, 
{monitoring} documents are just ordinary JSON documents built by monitoring each 
Elastic Stack component at some collection interval, then indexing those 
documents into the monitoring cluster. Each component in the stack is 
responsible for monitoring itself and then forwarding those documents to {es}
for both routing and indexing (storage).

The routing and indexing processes in {es} are handled by what are called
<<es-monitoring-collectors,collectors>> and 
<<es-monitoring-exporters,exporters>>. In the past, collectors and exporters
were considered to be part of a monitoring "agent", but that term is generally
not used anymore.

You can view monitoring data from {kib} where it’s easy to spot issues at a
glance or delve into the system behavior over time to diagnose operational
issues. In addition to the built-in status warnings, you can also set up custom
alerts based on the data in the monitoring indices.

For an introduction to monitoring your Elastic stack, including Beats, Logstash, 
and {kib}, see {xpack-ref}/xpack-monitoring.html[Monitoring the Elastic Stack].

--

include::collectors.asciidoc[]
include::exporters.asciidoc[]
include::pause-export.asciidoc[]