This article also appears on Elastic’s blog. Read at Elastic Stack
6.4.0 is here.
The release train continues, and we are excited to bring to you many new features across the stack. Download it now to take the latest features for a spin, or give it a go on Elastic Cloud.
We cover a few of the release highlights here. Dive into the individual product release posts for the full details. Without further ado, here goes.

Elastic APM

Trace all the details in the APM post.

• APM Server now supports Logstash and Apache Kafka as outputs, bringing more flexibility and data processing power to your tracing data.
• Search bar for APM – Slice and dice and filter your APM data in a flexible and fast way. Enjoy the query power of Elasticsearch, right from the APM UI.
• Machine Learning Integration – Click a button in the APM app to enable machine learning jobs and start detecting anomalies on service response times. A+ for automation.
• APM Agents – Real User Monitoring (JavaScript) and Ruby agents are now GA. Java and Go agents are now in Beta.

Elasticsearch

The summary is here. Get the granular view in the detail post.

• Kerberos – Elasticsearch already supports a variety of authentication mechanisms, and Kerberos is the latest addition. Yay for more choices.
• FIPS 140-2 – Elasticsearch now has the ability to run with a FIPS 140-2 enabled JVM, which makes operating in regulated environments that require it much simpler.
• Reloadable keystore – Pick up updated secure settings stored in the Elasticsearch keystore without requiring a node restart.
• Field Alias – For those times, when you change your mind on a field name, but are too lazy to write a reindex job to update it on the older indices. Say hello to the new alias type.
• Korean language analyzer – A brand new analyzer (“Nori”) for the Korean language that uses the same mecab-ko-dic dictionary you’re used to, but is faster and takes less disk space.
• Faster phrase searches with the addition of new index_phrases option on text fields.
• There’s much more new to share, but this summary is starting to look like a blog, and we already have one of those.

Kibana

‘Discover’ all the new ways of interacting with your data in the detail post. Here’s a sample view.

• One-click sample data – Take Kibana for a spin without having to go through the process of ingesting data yourself. Plus, enjoy new add data tutorials on the Kibana home.
• Spy panel – Inspect the data behind the viz with a little more ease with the redesigned spy panel.
• Scripted fields preview – Validate your scripted field expressions during creation, and save a few rounds of edits and saves.
• maps.elastic.co – An interactive web page to preview the features and fields in the layers published by Elastic Maps Service.
• Machine learning enhancements – Custom rules for fine tuning machine learning results, an enhanced UI for creating and managing machine learning jobs, and much more.

Logstash

Parse the details in the detail post.

• Logstash Azure Module – Monitoring your Azure cloud environment using the Elastic Stack is a single command away.
• File Input now has a read mode – A much demanded Logstash feature that lets you process files whose content was final and unchanged when they were discovered by the plugin.
• Faster and more stable HTTP Input – A popular input plugin gets a rewrite that brings more speed (~20% faster request processing), while maintaining backwards compatibility for a seamless user experience.

Beats

For a deeper dive, ‘Go’ read the detail post.

• Dissect processor – A new processor that’s fast and performant, and brings more processing power to the edge.
• Seccomp syslog filtering – Take advantage of secure computing mode on Linux system.
• Jolokia autodiscover provider – Use Jolokia Discovery to find agents running in your host or your network.
• More modules in Filebeat and Metricbeat – The march for more and better modules continues.

ES-Hadoop

The reduced form is below, but you can map the full picture in the detail post.

• Error Handler API is now GA
• Serialization Error Handlers have been added to ES-Hadoop that will allow you to intercept, inspect, and handle errors that occur when reading and writing JSON data.
• Elasticsearch Generic Error Handler – A new default error handler implementation that sends application errors to an Elasticsearch index for further search, analytics, and reporting.
• Support for Secure Settings – Package up the most sensitive settings and provide them via a keystore format