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Components and documentationedit

There are two ways to install, run, and manage Elastic APM:

  • With the Elastic APM integration
  • With the standalone (legacy) APM Server binary

This documentation focuses on option one: the Elastic APM integration. For standalone APM Server (legacy) documentation, please see the Legacy APM Overview and Legacy APM Server Reference.

Elastic APM consists of four components: APM agents, the Elastic APM integration, Elasticsearch, and Kibana. Generally, there are two ways that these four components can work together:

APM agents on edge machines send data to a centrally hosted APM integration:

Or, APM agents and the APM integration live on edge machines and enroll via a centrally hosted Elastic Agent: