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Configure APM agent configuration

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This documentation refers to configuring the standalone (legacy) APM Server. This method of running APM Server will be deprecated and removed in a future release. Please consider upgrading to Fleet and the APM integration.

APM agent configuration allows you to fine-tune your APM agents from within the APM app. Changes are automatically propagated to your APM agents, so there’s no need to redeploy your applications.

To learn more about this feature, see APM agent configuration.

Here’s a sample configuration:

apm-server.agent.config.cache.expiration: 45s
apm-server.agent.config.elasticsearch.api_key: TiNAGG4BaaMdaH1tRfuU:KnR6yE41RrSowb0kQ0HWoA

APM agent configuration options

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You can specify the following options in the apm-server.agent.config section of the apm-server.yml config file:

apm-server.agent.config.cache.expiration
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When using APM agent configuration, information fetched from Elasticsearch will be cached in memory for some time. Specify the cache expiration time via this setting. Defaults to 30s (30 seconds).

Authentication credentials

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For APM Server legacy users and Elastic Agent standalone-managed APM Server, APM agent configuration is automatically fetched from Elasticsearch using the output.elasticsearch configuration. If output.elasticsearch isn’t set or doesn’t have sufficient privileges, use these authentication configuration variables provide Elasticsearch access.

apm-server.agent.config.elasticsearch.username
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The basic authentication username for connecting to Elasticsearch.

apm-server.agent.config.elasticsearch.password
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The basic authentication password for connecting to Elasticsearch.

apm-server.agent.config.elasticsearch.api_key
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Authentication with an API key. Formatted as id:api_key

Common problems

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You may see either of the following HTTP 403 errors from APM Server when it attempts to fetch APM agent configuration:

APM agent log:

"Your Elasticsearch configuration does not support agent config queries. Check your configurations at `output.elasticsearch` or `apm-server.agent.config.elasticsearch`."

APM Server log:

rejecting fetch request: no valid elasticsearch config

This occurs because the user or API key set in either apm-server.agent.config.elasticsearch or output.elasticsearch (if apm-server.agent.config.elasticsearch is not set) does not have adequate permissions to read source maps from Elasticsearch.

To fix this error, ensure that APM Server has all the required privileges. See APM Server agent central configuration management for more details.