Creating demo visualizations with Apache log data

Now that we have our Elasticsearch index configured in Kibana, we can verify it by clicking on the Discover tab on the left menu. By default, it shows data from the last 15 minutes, which we can change by clicking on the top-right link for duration. We can see our data with the time and _source columns. This view can be customized by adding the available fields from the left menu.

Now, I will create a very simple visualization option in order to explain the customization options. Later, I will explain these in detail. To create a visualization, we need to click on the Visualize link from the left menu, which will open the following screen:

This will show us all of the visualizations that we have created along with a button named Create a visualization for creating a new visualization. As we have not created any visualizations yet, there is only the button for creating visualizations. So, now, we are going to create our first visualization, and for that we need to click on the Create a visualization button, which will open the following screen:

This screen is used for selecting visualization options. There are five categories, and these are Basic Charts, Data, Maps, Time series, and Other. Under Basic Charts, we have Area, Heat Map, Horizontal Bar, Vertical Bar, Line, and Pie charts. Under Data, we have Data Table, Gauge, Goal, and Metric options. Under Maps, we have coordinates and Region Map, whereas under Time Series, we have Timelion and the Visual Builder. Finally, under Other, we have controls, markdown, and tag cloud options available. We will cover these in later chapters, so for now, I will create a basic metric visualization under the data option. For that, we need to click on the Metric link, which will open the following screen:

In the previous screen, we can see two options: one from a new search and another from a saved search. For now, we will click on the index name from the first option, which will open the following screen:

Here, we can see the preview of metrics data and on the left part of the window, we have Data and Options. Here, we are going to create a very simple metric to count the number of log entries. For creating the count metrics, we need to click on the Metrics link from the left side of the window, which will open the following screen:

In this screen, from the Aggregation dropdown, we have to select the Count option, and in the custom label, we need to provide the label of the metrics display. Now, our metrics data display is ready, which we need to save in order to use it further. We need to provide the name of the visualization and click on the Save button, which will save the visualization. Now, we can verify it by clicking on the visualization link from the left menu, which will open the following screen:

Here, we can see the link for the metrics data visualization that we have just created with a plus button so that we can add more visualizations if we desire. For now, I have also created a test bar chart visualization named ANC_data, which I will use with the metrics data visualization to create the dashboard.