Configurations related to Filebeat are stored in a configuration file named filebeat.yml. They use the YAML syntax. 

The filebeat.yml file contains the following important sections:

• Filebeat inputs
• Filebeat modules
• Elasticsearch template settings
• Filebeat general/global options
• Kibana dashboard settings
• Output configuration 
• Processors configuration 
• Logging configuration

Some of these sections are common for all type of Beats. Before we look into some of these, let's see what a simple configuration would look like. As we can see in the following configuration, when Filebeat is started, it looks for files ending with the .log extension in the E:packtlogs path. It ships the log entries of each file to Elasticsearch, which is configured as the output, and is hosted at localhost:9200:

#filebeat.yml
#=========================== Filebeat inputs =============================

filebeat.inputs:

- type: log

  # Change to true to enable this input configuration.
  enabled: true

  # Paths that should be crawled and fetched. Glob based paths.
  paths:
    - E:packtlogs*.log

#================================ Outputs =====================================

#-------------------------- Elasticsearch output ------------------------------
output.elasticsearch:
 # Array of hosts to connect to.
 hosts: ["localhost:9200"]

Place some log files in E:packtlogs. To get Filebeat to ship the logs, execute the following command:

Windows:
E:>filebeat-7.0.0-windows-x86_64>filebeat.exe

Linux:
[locationOfFilebeat]$ ./filebeat

To validate whether the logs were shipped to Elasticsearch, execute the following command:

E:>curl -X GET http://localhost:9200/filebeat*/_search?pretty

Sample Response:
{
  "took" : 2,
  "timed_out" : false,
  "_shards" : {
    "total" : 1,
    "successful" : 1,
    "skipped" : 0,
    "failed" : 0
  },
  "hits" : {
    "total" : {
      "value" : 3,
      "relation" : "eq"
    },
    "max_score" : 1.0,
    "hits" : [
      {
        "_index" : "filebeat-7.0.0-2019.04.22",
        "_type" : "_doc",
        "_id" : "bPnZQ2oB_501XGfHmzJg",
        "_score" : 1.0,
        "_source" : {
          "@timestamp" : "2019-04-22T07:01:30.820Z",
          "ecs" : {
            "version" : "1.0.0"
          },
          "host" : {
            "id" : "254667db-4667-46f9-8cf5-0d52ccf2beb9",
            "name" : "madsh01-I21350",
            "hostname" : "madsh01-I21350",
            "architecture" : "x86_64",
            "os" : {
              "platform" : "windows",
              "version" : "6.1",
              "family" : "windows",
              "name" : "Windows 7 Enterprise",
              "kernel" : "6.1.7601.24408 (win7sp1_ldr_escrow.190320-1700)",
              "build" : "7601.24411"
            }
          },
          "agent" : {
            "type" : "filebeat",
            "ephemeral_id" : "d2ef4b77-3c46-4af4-85b4-e9f690ce00f1",
            "hostname" : "madsh01-I21350",
            "id" : "29600459-f3ca-4516-8dc4-8a0fd1bd6b0f",
            "version" : "7.0.0"
          },
          "log" : {
            "offset" : 0,
            "file" : {
              "path" : "E:\packt\logs\one.log"
            }
          },
          "message" : "exception at line1",
          "input" : {
            "type" : "log"
          }
        }
      },
    ...
    ...
    ...