Logstash helps centralize event data such as logs, metrics, or any other data in any format. It can perform a number of transformations before sending it to a stash of your choice. It is a key component of the Elastic Stack, used to centralize the collection and transformation processes in your data pipeline.

Logstash is a server-side component. Its role is to centralize the collection of data from a wide number of input sources in a scalable way, and transform and send the data to an output of your choice. Typically, the output is sent to Elasticsearch, but Logstash is capable of sending it to a wide variety of outputs. Logstash has a plugin-based, extensible architecture. It supports three types of plugin: input plugins, filter plugins, and output plugins. Logstash has a collection of 200+ supported plugins and the count is ever increasing.

Logstash is an excellent general-purpose data flow engine that helps in building real-time, scalable data pipelines.