Running APM Server on Dockeredit

Docker images for APM Server are available from the Elastic Docker registry. The base image is centos:7.

A list of all published Docker images and tags is available at www.docker.elastic.co.

These images are free to use under the Elastic license. They contain open source and free commercial features and access to paid commercial features. Start a 30-day trial to try out all of the paid commercial features. See the Subscriptions page for information about Elastic license levels.

Pulling the imageedit

Obtaining APM Server for Docker is as simple as issuing a docker pull command against the Elastic Docker registry.

docker pull docker.elastic.co/apm/apm-server:7.5.2

Alternatively, you can download other Docker images that contain only features available under the Apache 2.0 license. To download the images, go to www.docker.elastic.co.

Configure APM Server on Dockeredit

The Docker image provides several methods for configuring APM Server. The conventional approach is to provide a configuration file via a volume mount, but it’s also possible to create a custom image with your configuration included.

Example configuration fileedit

Download this example configuration file as a starting point:

curl -L -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/elastic/apm-server/7.5/apm-server.docker.yml

Volume-mounted configurationedit

One way to configure APM Server on Docker is to provide apm-server.docker.yml via a volume mount. With docker run, the volume mount can be specified like this.

docker run -d \
  --name=apm-server \
  --user=apm-server \
  --volume="$(pwd)/apm-server.docker.yml:/usr/share/apm-server/apm-server.yml:ro" \
  docker.elastic.co/apm/apm-server:7.5.2 \
  --strict.perms=false -e \
  -E output.elasticsearch.hosts=["elasticsearch:9200"]  

Substitute your Elasticsearch hosts and ports.

If you are using the hosted Elasticsearch Service in Elastic Cloud, replace the -E output.elasticsearch.hosts line with the Cloud ID and elastic password using the syntax shown earlier.

Customize your configurationedit

The apm-server.docker.yml downloaded earlier should be customized for your environment. See Configuring APM Server for more details. Edit the configuration file and customize it to match your environment then re-deploy your APM Server container.

Custom image configurationedit

It’s possible to embed your APM Server configuration in a custom image. Here is an example Dockerfile to achieve this:

FROM docker.elastic.co/apm/apm-server:7.5.2
COPY apm-server.yml /usr/share/apm-server/apm-server.yml
USER root
RUN chown root:apm-server /usr/share/apm-server/apm-server.yml
USER apm-server