This is a two part series on setting up an ELK stack to receive syslog and in the next post Bro logs. The ELK stack is an awesome collection of software but a complicated MumboJumboCombo of components. I wanted to help break that barrier for beginners and to help explain how each component works. So stick with me on this two part series! I would like to give credit to this DigitalOcean post writer for the ELK stack write-up which I’ll be referencing. Additionally my Github contains a script to setup the ELK stack for CentOS 7 64-bit based on the guide below.