ELK Stack — Kibana Advanced
Introduction
Kibana is far more than a search and visualization tool. Its advanced capabilities transform it into a comprehensive operations platform — from building pixel-perfect executive dashboards with Canvas, to mapping geospatial data with Maps, to waking up on-call engineers with Alerting, and enforcing least-privilege access with RBAC.
This chapter covers the advanced Kibana features that production teams rely on daily. You will learn how to manage data views, create rich visual presentations, set up automated alerts, organize work with Spaces, generate scheduled reports, and lock down access with role-based controls.
What You’ll Learn
- Create and manage Data Views (formerly index patterns) including runtime fields and cross-cluster views
- Build Canvas workpads with custom expressions and live data sources
- Visualize geospatial data with Kibana Maps and multiple layer types
- Configure alerting rules with connectors for Slack, PagerDuty, email, and more
- Generate and schedule reports in CSV, PDF, and PNG formats
- Organize teams and projects with Spaces
- Implement role-based access control with field-level and document-level security
Chapter Contents
| # | Topic | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Data Views | Create, manage, and customize data views with runtime fields and API access |
| 2 | Canvas and Maps | Build pixel-perfect presentations and geospatial visualizations |
| 3 | Alerting | Set up rule-based alerts with action connectors and maintenance windows |
| 4 | Reporting and Spaces | Generate scheduled reports and organize work with Spaces |
| 5 | RBAC | Implement role-based access control with granular privileges |
| 6 | Practice Exercises | Hands-on labs covering all advanced Kibana features |
Prerequisites
Before starting this chapter, ensure you have:
- A running Elasticsearch and Kibana instance (version 8.x)
- Sample data loaded (Kibana sample datasets or your own indices)
- Basic familiarity with Kibana Discover, dashboards, and visualizations
- Administrative access to Kibana for RBAC and Spaces configuration
Real-World Context
In a typical production environment, different teams need different levels of access:
- SRE / Platform teams — full access to infrastructure metrics, alerting rules, and Canvas status boards
- Developers — read access to application logs and APM data within their team’s Space
- Executives — scheduled PDF reports of business KPIs generated from Canvas workpads
- Security analysts — dedicated Space with SIEM dashboards, geospatial Maps, and alerting on anomalies
The features in this chapter make these workflows possible. Let’s dive in.
Next: Data Views →
