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question: What is OpenSearch Data Prepper?
category: Tools and Plugins
---

Data Prepper is a server-side data collector capable of filtering, enriching, transforming, normalizing and aggregating data for downstream analytics and visualization. Also, Data Prepper lets users build custom pipelines to improve the operational view of applications.

Two common uses of Data Prepper are trace and log analytics. Trace analytics help you visualize the flow of events and identify performance problems. Log analytics can improve search functionality, as well as help you analyze and provide insights into your application.

To get started building your own custom pipelines with Data Prepper, see the [Data Prepper Get Started](https://opensearch.org/docs/latest/clients/data-prepper/get-started/) guide.