X-Pack is an Elastic Stack extension that bundles security, alerting, monitoring, reporting, machine learning, and graph capabilities into one easy-to-install package. It adds essential features to make Elastic Stack production-ready. Unlike the components of Elastic Stack, which are open source, X-Pack is a commercial offering from Elastic.co, and so it requires a paid license so that it can be used. When you install X-Pack for the first time, you are given a 30-day trial. Even though X-Pack comes as a bundle, it allows you to easily enable or disable the features you want to use. In this chapter, we won't be covering all the features provided by X-Pack, but we will be covering the important features that an X-Pack beginner should be aware of.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• Installing Elasticsearch and Kibana with X-Pack
• Configuring/activating X-Pack trial account
• Securing Elasticsearch and Kibana
• Monitoring Elasticsearch
• Alerting