Kibana: Provide Windows Service

[pickypg]

Now that there's a Linux service release of Kibana (#5187), it would be great if there was a Windows Service installer/launcher too.

[onemark]

Yes that would be awesome!

[ImdotnetJunkie]

Any update on this as when this would be available ?

[onemark]

Kibana and Elasticsearch windows installer is being developed (release date not yet set), being said by Elastic support beginning of November 2016. I'll ask what the status is on that.

[emrahcetiner]

Is there an update?

[russcam]

The Kibana MSI installer is at an alpha stage where we would love to start gathering wider feedback on it from the community.

The installer can be built from the Windows installer's github repository, from the feature/kibana branch. It should be straightforwad to build:

1. Clone the repository
2. Run the build.bat script in the root of the repo
3. A Kibana and Elasticsearch MSI will be built and output to the ~/build/out directory.
4. Run the MSI by double clicking

If you encounter any issues, please feel free to open an issue on the repository.

With regards to a release schedule, once the installer is in a place where we are happy for a first release, it'll need to be included in the Elastic unified release. We don't have a definitive timeline for when this will be, but we are actively working on it!

[ScottSchwalm]

Is there an update when an installer for windows and the option to run as a service will be available?

[russcam]

@ScottSchwalm no update at this time; we're currently focused on getting the Elasticsearch Windows Installer ready for the 6.0 GA release which includes a fair few changes.

[LeeDr]

@russcam I just pointed someone to try out https://github.com/elastic/windows-installers/tree/feature/kibana from your previous comment and found that its no longer there.

I think we should treat this topic as 2 separate issues;

• [ ] a Windows installer (I think there's currently problems with Kibana having tens of thousands of files?) https://github.com/elastic/kibana/issues/15963
• [ ] a script to create a Windows service (this issue). Ideally we would try to be consistent with either what Elasticsearch does or what Beats do for creating the service.

The script to create the Windows service would help a lot of people and shouldn't be blocked by the Windows installer task. The description of this issue is really asking for the Windows service. So I just created another issue for the Windows MSI installer (referenced above).

[russcam]

@LeeDr the installers code base has changed considerably since https://github.com/elastic/kibana/issues/6218#issuecomment-285508105; the changes have been around improving the Elasticsearch installer, with changes to the Kibana part only to allow it to continue to compile. as such, I would not at this time suggest building an installer from it since it is likely to not work as intended right now.

[alexhass]

a Windows installer (I think there's currently problems with Kibana having tens of thousands of files?)

That is not really a problem... WiX has an automatism to cab the files... if too many it moves to the next cab.

[russcam]

@alexhass The number of files is not an issue of packaging in an MSI, but an issue of installation experience; all the files need to be unpacked within a transacted install, which makes the installation time in the order of minutes. Granted, the time it takes to unzip the zip archive on Windows is still large (somewhere around 6-7 minutes on my machine), but we've found the MSI to take longer than this, usually around twice as long, IIRC.

[alexhass]

Ah ok. I need to say that the time is not important at all. The only important thing is that I CAN install and customize the setup with an MST and I do not need to do all installation steps manually. This this takes much longer! As long as I see the progress bar in the msi setup, all is ok. Msi is the best setup type at all and also works for AD deployment.... so perfect.

Kibana on windows has more serious issues than the setup runtime because of many files.

A biggest issue is the suxxx manual installation and the inability of a service that require me the use 3rd party software that runs the kibana.bat. What a shit... sorry

[alexhass]

How are you guys making progress on the windows service implementation? This is the biggest blocker for kibana on windows from my point of view.

[JeffreyH1989]

Any progress on this? Using a beta version of NSSM to run Kibana as a service is not preferable in a production environment

[CloudViking86]

Also wondering if there is any process, was very pleased to find that there are instructions to install ES as a service in Windows but became a bit sad that there wasn't any instructions or option for Kibana.

[ygel]

Work on Kibana Windows installer will resume after new wave MSI packages for Beats and Elasticsearch are done. Beats installer is in active development now.

[CloudViking86]

Work on Kibana Windows installer will resume after new wave MSI packages for Beats and Elasticsearch are done. Beats installer is in active development now.

Thank you for your reply, is this something separate from having Kibana as a service or will the MSI-installation include the option to install it as a service so you meld both these issues into one solution?

[ygel]

Hello @CloudViking86, we'll look at Kibana windows install as a whole.

[sachin-frayne]

+one for me, :smile:

[ygel]

There's a ticket for Kibana MSI: https://github.com/elastic/elastic-stack-installers/issues/60

[alaa-mallah]

had a customer asking about running kibana as a service on windows recently

[rafatawartani]

++