Can you explain what Logstash is and what it is used for in data collection infrastructure?

Logstash is a tool for collecting, processing, and transmitting logs and other data in monitoring and analysis infrastructure. It is part of the Elastic Stack (ELK) along with Elasticsearch and Kibana.

Main functions of Logstash:

• Receiving data from various sources (logs, databases, message queues, etc.)
• Transforming and filtering data (e.g., parsing, enriching, removing unnecessary information)
• Sending processed data to storage systems, such as Elasticsearch

Example of use: servers generate logs, Logstash collects them, parses, and sends to Elasticsearch, where data is indexed and becomes accessible for search and visualization through Kibana.

This allows centralized log management, quick error detection, and system behavior analysis.