{kib} relies on three high-level entities to set the logging service: appenders, loggers, and root.
- Appenders define where log messages are displayed (stdout or console) and their layout (`pattern` or `json`). They also allow you to specify if you want the logs stored and, if so, where (file on the disk).
- Loggers define what logging settings, such as the level of verbosity and the appenders, to apply to a particular context. Each log entry context provides information about the service or plugin that emits it and any of its sub-parts, for example, `metrics.ops` or `elasticsearch.query`.
- Root is a logger that applies to all the log entries in {kib}.
Refer to the <<log-settings-examples, examples>> for common configuration use cases. To learn more about possible configuration values, go to {kibana-ref}/logging-service.html[{kib}'s Logging service].
Log the default log format to JSON layout instead of pattern (the default).
With `json` layout, log messages will be formatted as JSON strings in https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/ecs/current/ecs-reference.html[ECS format] that includes a timestamp, log level, logger, message text and any other metadata that may be associated with the log message itself.