Azure Application Insights vs ELK

Overview

ELK

Stacks863

Followers941

Votes23

Azure Application Insights

Stacks343

Followers288

Votes12

Azure Application Insights vs ELK: What are the differences?

Azure Application Insights and ELK (Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana) are two widely used monitoring and analytics tools for systems and applications. Let's explore the key differences between them.

Data Collection: Azure Application Insights is a service provided by Microsoft Azure that automatically collects data and metrics from various sources, including web applications, servers, and custom instrumentation. In contrast, ELK requires manual setup and configuration to collect and process logs and other data.
Ease of Use: Azure Application Insights offers a user-friendly interface and easy integration with Azure services, making it convenient for developers and system administrators. On the other hand, ELK requires more technical expertise to set up, configure, and use effectively.
Scalability: Azure Application Insights is a fully managed service that can handle large volumes of data and scale automatically based on demand. ELK, however, requires manual configuration and optimization for scalability, making it less suitable for handling massive data sets.
Integrated Monitoring and Management: Azure Application Insights integrates well with other Azure services, such as Azure Monitor and Azure DevOps, providing a comprehensive solution for monitoring, alerting, and managing applications. ELK, while powerful for log analysis, lacks the tight integration and ecosystem of Azure Application Insights.
Analysis and Visualization: With Azure Application Insights, users have access to advanced analytics capabilities, including smart detection, anomaly detection, and powerful visualization tools. ELK also provides powerful analysis and visualization through Kibana, but its capabilities may require more manual configuration and customization.
Cost: Azure Application Insights has a flexible pricing model based on data volume and retention period, allowing users to choose a suitable plan based on their needs. ELK, on the other hand, is an open-source solution, allowing users to save on licensing costs but requiring more resources for setup, maintenance, and hosting.

In summary, Azure Application Insights offers a more integrated, user-friendly, and scalable solution for monitoring and managing applications, while ELK provides more flexibility and customization options but requires more technical expertise and manual configuration.

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Detailed Comparison

ELK	Azure Application Insights
It is the acronym for three open source projects: Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana. Elasticsearch is a search and analytics engine. Logstash is a server‑side data processing pipeline that ingests data from multiple sources simultaneously, transforms it, and then sends it to a "stash" like Elasticsearch. Kibana lets users visualize data with charts and graphs in Elasticsearch.	It is an extensible Application Performance Management service for developers and DevOps professionals. Use it to monitor your live applications. It will automatically detect performance anomalies, and includes powerful analytics tools.
-	Extensible Application Performance Management (APM) service; Monitor your live applications; Automatically detect performance anomalies
Statistics
Stacks 863	Stacks 343
Followers 941	Followers 288
Votes 23	Votes 12
Pros & Cons
Pros 14 Open source 4 Can run locally 3 Good for startups with monetary limitations 1 External Network Goes Down You Aren't Without Logging 1 Easy to setup Cons 5 Elastic Search is a resource hog 3 Logstash configuration is a pain 1 Bad for startups with personal limitations	Pros 6 Focus in detect performance anomalies and issues 3 Integrated with Azure 1 User flow 1 Live Metrics 1 Availability tests (Heart Beat check) Cons 2 Difficult to surface information 1 UI is clunky and gets in the way 1 Custom instrumentation via code only

What are some alternatives to ELK, Azure Application Insights?

New Relic

The world’s best software and DevOps teams rely on New Relic to move faster, make better decisions and create best-in-class digital experiences. If you run software, you need to run New Relic. More than 50% of the Fortune 100 do too.

Datadog

Datadog is the leading service for cloud-scale monitoring. It is used by IT, operations, and development teams who build and operate applications that run on dynamic or hybrid cloud infrastructure. Start monitoring in minutes with Datadog!

Papertrail

Papertrail helps detect, resolve, and avoid infrastructure problems using log messages. Papertrail's practicality comes from our own experience as sysadmins, developers, and entrepreneurs.

Logmatic

Get a clear overview of what is happening across your distributed environments, and spot the needle in the haystack in no time. Build dynamic analyses and identify improvements for your software, your user experience and your business.

Raygun

Raygun gives you a window into how users are really experiencing your software applications. Detect, diagnose and resolve issues that are affecting end users with greater speed and accuracy.

Loggly

It is a SaaS solution to manage your log data. There is nothing to install and updates are automatically applied to your Loggly subdomain.

Logentries

Logentries makes machine-generated log data easily accessible to IT operations, development, and business analysis teams of all sizes. With the broadest platform support and an open API, Logentries brings the value of log-level data to any system, to any team member, and to a community of more than 25,000 worldwide users.

Logstash

Logstash is a tool for managing events and logs. You can use it to collect logs, parse them, and store them for later use (like, for searching). If you store them in Elasticsearch, you can view and analyze them with Kibana.

AppSignal

AppSignal gives you and your team alerts and detailed metrics about your Ruby, Node.js or Elixir application. Sensible pricing, no aggressive sales & support by developers.

Graylog

Centralize and aggregate all your log files for 100% visibility. Use our powerful query language to search through terabytes of log data to discover and analyze important information.

Related Comparisons

Azure Application Insights vs ELK: What are the differences?

Data Collection: Azure Application Insights is a service provided by Microsoft Azure that automatically collects data and metrics from various sources, including web applications, servers, and custom instrumentation. In contrast, ELK requires manual setup and configuration to collect and process logs and other data.
Ease of Use: Azure Application Insights offers a user-friendly interface and easy integration with Azure services, making it convenient for developers and system administrators. On the other hand, ELK requires more technical expertise to set up, configure, and use effectively.
Scalability: Azure Application Insights is a fully managed service that can handle large volumes of data and scale automatically based on demand. ELK, however, requires manual configuration and optimization for scalability, making it less suitable for handling massive data sets.
Integrated Monitoring and Management: Azure Application Insights integrates well with other Azure services, such as Azure Monitor and Azure DevOps, providing a comprehensive solution for monitoring, alerting, and managing applications. ELK, while powerful for log analysis, lacks the tight integration and ecosystem of Azure Application Insights.
Analysis and Visualization: With Azure Application Insights, users have access to advanced analytics capabilities, including smart detection, anomaly detection, and powerful visualization tools. ELK also provides powerful analysis and visualization through Kibana, but its capabilities may require more manual configuration and customization.
Cost: Azure Application Insights has a flexible pricing model based on data volume and retention period, allowing users to choose a suitable plan based on their needs. ELK, on the other hand, is an open-source solution, allowing users to save on licensing costs but requiring more resources for setup, maintenance, and hosting.

Azure Application Insights vs ELK

Overview