In order to explore X-Pack and its features, we will need to download Elasticsearch and Kibana with Elastic license. 

You can download Elasticsearch from https://www.elastic.co/downloads/past-releases/elasticsearch-7-0-0.

You can download Kibana from https://www.elastic.co/downloads/past-releases/kibana-7-0-0.

Please refer to Chapter 1, Introducing Elastic Stack, for installation instructions for Elasticsearch and Chapter 7, Visualizing Data with Kibana, for installation instructions for Kibana.

When you start Elasticsearch, you should see X-Pack-related plugins getting loaded and new files getting created under the ES_HOME/config folder. The bootup logs should also indicate the license type; in this case, this will be basic:

[2019-05-21T13:38:08,679][INFO ][o.e.p.PluginsService ] [MADSH01-APM01] loaded module [x-pack-ccr]
[2019-05-21T13:38:08,682][INFO ][o.e.p.PluginsService ] [MADSH01-APM01] loaded module [x-pack-core]
[2019-05-21T13:38:08,684][INFO ][o.e.p.PluginsService ] [MADSH01-APM01] loaded module [x-pack-deprecation]
[2019-05-21T13:38:08,687][INFO ][o.e.p.PluginsService ] [MADSH01-APM01] loaded module [x-pack-graph]
[2019-05-21T13:38:08,689][INFO ][o.e.p.PluginsService ] [MADSH01-APM01] loaded module [x-pack-ilm]
[2019-05-21T13:38:08,690][INFO ][o.e.p.PluginsService ] [MADSH01-APM01] loaded module [x-pack-logstash]
[2019-05-21T13:38:08,692][INFO ][o.e.p.PluginsService ] [MADSH01-APM01] loaded module [x-pack-ml]
[2019-05-21T13:38:08,694][INFO ][o.e.p.PluginsService ] [MADSH01-APM01] loaded module [x-pack-monitoring]
[2019-05-21T13:38:08,696][INFO ][o.e.p.PluginsService ] [MADSH01-APM01] loaded module [x-pack-rollup]
[2019-05-21T13:38:08,698][INFO ][o.e.p.PluginsService ] [MADSH01-APM01] loaded module [x-pack-security]
[2019-05-21T13:38:08,700][INFO ][o.e.p.PluginsService ] [MADSH01-APM01] loaded module [x-pack-sql]
[2019-05-21T13:38:08,707][INFO ][o.e.p.PluginsService ] [MADSH01-APM01] loaded module [x-pack-watcher]

:
:
[2019-05-21T13:38:18,783][INFO ][o.e.l.LicenseService ] [MADSH01-APM01] license [727c7d40-2008-428f-bc9f-b7f511fc399e] mode [basic] - valid
[2019-05-21T13:38:18,843][INFO ][o.e.g.GatewayService ] [MADSH01-APM01] recovered [0] indices into cluster_states

If you list the files under the ES_HOME/config directory, you should see the files being displayed, as shown in the following screenshot. All the highlighted files are the new files that aren't available if the Elasticsearch OSS version is used:

When you start Kibana, you should see a list of X-Pack-related plugins that are loaded, as shown in the following code:

  log [05:57:13.939] [info][status][plugin:[email protected]] Status changed from uninitialized to yellow - Waiting for Elasticsearch
  log [05:57:13.952] [info][status][plugin:[email protected]] Status changed from uninitialized to yellow - Waiting for Elasticsearch
  log [05:57:13.968] [info][status][plugin:[email protected]] Status changed from uninitialized to green - Ready
  log [05:57:13.974] [info][status][plugin:[email protected]] Status changed from uninitialized to yellow - Waiting for Elasticsearch
  :
  :
  log [05:57:14.136] [info][status][plugin:[email protected]] Status changed from uninitialized to yellow - Waiting for Elasticsearch
  log [05:57:14.162] [info][status][plugin:apm_oss@undefined] Status changed from uninitialized to green - Ready
  log [05:57:14.179] [info][status][plugin:[email protected]] Status changed from uninitialized to green - Ready
 :
 :
  log [05:57:16.798] [info][license][xpack] Imported license information from Elasticsearch for the [data] cluster: mode: basic | status: active
  :
  :
  log [05:57:19.711] [info][listening] Server running at http://localhost:5601
  log [05:57:20.530] [info][status][plugin:[email protected]] Status changed from yellow to green - Ready

Open Kibana by navigating to http:localhost:5601. You should see the following screen. Some of the new features that are not present in the OSS version are highlighted in the following screenshot: