Metricbeat vs Packetbeat: What are the differences?

# Introduction

Key differences between Metricbeat and Packetbeat:

1. **Data Type Monitored**:
Metricbeat collects system-level metrics, while Packetbeat focuses on network traffic monitoring.

2. **Metrics vs Packets**:
Metricbeat collects numeric data metrics like CPU usage, memory consumption, and disk utilization, while Packetbeat captures and analyzes actual network packets allowing for deep network traffic insights.

3. **Application Focus**:
Metricbeat is more focused on monitoring infrastructure metrics for systems and applications, while Packetbeat is specifically geared towards network traffic analysis for troubleshooting and security purposes.

4. **Protocols Supported**:
Metricbeat typically supports collecting metrics from various platforms like Docker, Apache, MySQL, and others, whereas Packetbeat focuses on capturing, decoding, and analyzing data from protocols like HTTP, DNS, MySQL, etc.

5. **Granularity of Data**:
Metricbeat provides aggregated metrics about the system and applications, while Packetbeat offers detailed insights into network traffic capturing individual packets and their contents.

6. **Use Cases**:
Metricbeat is commonly used for infrastructure monitoring, performance analysis, and capacity planning, while Packetbeat is utilized for network troubleshooting, identifying application performance issues, and detecting security threats in real-time.

In Summary, Metricbeat and Packetbeat differ in the type of data monitored, focus on metrics vs packets, supported protocols, granularity of data, application focus, and use cases.