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Kibana Guide [master] » Set Up Kibana » Configuring Kibana
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Configuring Kibanaedit

The Kibana server reads properties from the kibana.yml file on startup. The location of this file differs depending on how you installed Kibana. For example, if you installed Kibana from an archive distribution (.tar.gz or .zip), by default it is in $KIBANA_HOME/config. By default, with package distributions (Debian or RPM), it is in /etc/kibana.

The default host and port settings configure Kibana to run on localhost:5601. To change this behavior and allow remote users to connect, you’ll need to update your kibana.yml file. You can also enable SSL and set a variety of other options. Finally, environment variables can be injected into configuration using ${MY_ENV_VAR} syntax.

console.enabled:
Default: true Set to false to disable Console. Toggling this will cause the server to regenerate assets on the next startup, which may cause a delay before pages start being served.
cpu.cgroup.path.override:
Override for cgroup cpu path when mounted in a manner that is inconsistent with /proc/self/cgroup
cpuacct.cgroup.path.override:
Override for cgroup cpuacct path when mounted in a manner that is inconsistent with /proc/self/cgroup
csp.rules:
A template content-security-policy that disables certain unnecessary and potentially insecure capabilities in the browser. We strongly recommend that you keep the default CSP rules that ship with Kibana.
csp.strict:
Default: true Blocks access to Kibana to any browser that does not enforce even rudimentary CSP rules. In practice, this will disable support for older, less safe browsers like Internet Explorer. See Content Security Policy for more information.
csp.warnLegacyBrowsers:
Default: true Shows a warning message after loading Kibana to any browser that does not enforce even rudimentary CSP rules, though Kibana is still accessible. This configuration is effectively ignored when csp.strict is enabled.
elasticsearch.customHeaders:
Default: {} Header names and values to send to Elasticsearch. Any custom headers cannot be overwritten by client-side headers, regardless of the elasticsearch.requestHeadersWhitelist configuration.
elasticsearch.hosts:
Default: "http://localhost:9200" The URLs of the Elasticsearch instances to use for all your queries. All nodes listed here must be on the same cluster.
elasticsearch.logQueries:
Default: false Logs queries sent to Elasticsearch. Requires logging.verbose set to true. This is useful for seeing the query DSL generated by applications that currently do not have an inspector, for example Timelion and Monitoring.
elasticsearch.pingTimeout:
Default: the value of the elasticsearch.requestTimeout setting Time in milliseconds to wait for Elasticsearch to respond to pings.
elasticsearch.preserveHost:
Default: true When this setting’s value is true, Kibana uses the hostname specified in the server.host setting. When the value of this setting is false, Kibana uses the hostname of the host that connects to this Kibana instance.
elasticsearch.requestHeadersWhitelist:
Default: [ 'authorization' ] List of Kibana client-side headers to send to Elasticsearch. To send no client-side headers, set this value to [] (an empty list). Removing the authorization header from being whitelisted means that you cannot use basic authentication in Kibana.
elasticsearch.requestTimeout:
Default: 30000 Time in milliseconds to wait for responses from the back end or Elasticsearch. This value must be a positive integer.
elasticsearch.shardTimeout:
Default: 30000 Time in milliseconds for Elasticsearch to wait for responses from shards. Set to 0 to disable.
elasticsearch.sniffInterval:
Default: false Time in milliseconds between requests to check Elasticsearch for an updated list of nodes.
elasticsearch.sniffOnStart:
Default: false Attempt to find other Elasticsearch nodes on startup.
elasticsearch.sniffOnConnectionFault:
Default: false Update the list of Elasticsearch nodes immediately following a connection fault.
elasticsearch.ssl.alwaysPresentCertificate:
Default: false Controls whether to always present the certificate specified by elasticsearch.ssl.certificate or elasticsearch.ssl.keystore.path when requested. This setting applies to all requests to Elasticsearch, including requests that are proxied for end users. Setting this to true when Elasticsearch is using certificates to authenticate users can lead to proxied requests for end users being executed as the identity tied to the configured certificate.
elasticsearch.ssl.certificate: and elasticsearch.ssl.key:

Paths to a PEM-encoded X.509 certificate and its private key, respectively. When xpack.security.http.ssl.client_authentication in Elasticsearch is set to required or optional, the certificate and key are used to prove Kibana’s identity when it makes an outbound request to your Elasticsearch cluster.

These settings cannot be used in conjunction with elasticsearch.ssl.keystore.path.

elasticsearch.ssl.certificateAuthorities:
Paths to one or more PEM-encoded X.509 certificates. These certificates may consist of a root certificate authority (CA), and one or more intermediate CAs, which make up a trusted certificate chain for Kibana. This chain is used to establish trust when Kibana creates an SSL connection with your Elasticsearch cluster. In addition to this setting, trusted certificates may be specified via elasticsearch.ssl.keystore.path and/or elasticsearch.ssl.truststore.path.
elasticsearch.ssl.keyPassphrase:
The passphrase that will be used to decrypt the private key that is specified via elasticsearch.ssl.key. This value is optional, as the key may not be encrypted.
elasticsearch.ssl.keystore.path:

Path to a PKCS #12 file that contains an X.509 certificate with its private key. When xpack.security.http.ssl.client_authentication in Elasticsearch is set to required or optional, the certificate and key are used to prove Kibana’s identity when it makes an outbound request to your Elasticsearch cluster. If the file contains any additional certificates, those will be used as a trusted certificate chain for your Elasticsearch cluster. This chain is used to establish trust when Kibana creates an SSL connection with your Elasticsearch cluster. In addition to this setting, trusted certificates may be specified via elasticsearch.ssl.certificateAuthorities and/or elasticsearch.ssl.truststore.path.

This setting cannot be used in conjunction with elasticsearch.ssl.certificate or elasticsearch.ssl.key.

elasticsearch.ssl.keystore.password:
The password that will be used to decrypt the key store and its private key. If your key store has no password, leave this unset. If your key store has an empty password, set this to "".
elasticsearch.ssl.truststore.path:
Path to a PKCS #12 trust store that contains one or more X.509 certificates. This may consist of a root certificate authority (CA) and one or more intermediate CAs, which make up a trusted certificate chain for your Elasticsearch cluster. This chain is used to establish trust when Kibana creates an SSL connection with your Elasticsearch cluster. In addition to this setting, trusted certificates may be specified via elasticsearch.ssl.certificateAuthorities and/or elasticsearch.ssl.keystore.path.
elasticsearch.ssl.truststore.password:
The password that will be used to decrypt the trust store. If your trust store has no password, leave this unset. If your trust store has an empty password, set this to "".
elasticsearch.ssl.verificationMode:
Default: full Controls the verification of certificates presented by Elasticsearch. Valid values are none, certificate, and full. full performs hostname verification and certificate does not. This setting is used only when traffic to Elasticsearch is encrypted, which is specified by using the HTTPS protocol in elasticsearch.hosts.
elasticsearch.startupTimeout:
Default: 5000 Time in milliseconds to wait for Elasticsearch at Kibana startup before retrying.
elasticsearch.username: and elasticsearch.password:
If your Elasticsearch is protected with basic authentication, these settings provide the username and password that the Kibana server uses to perform maintenance on the Kibana index at startup. Your Kibana users still need to authenticate with Elasticsearch, which is proxied through the Kibana server.
interpreter.enableInVisualize
Default: true Enables use of interpreter in Visualize.
kibana.defaultAppId:
Default: "home" The default application to load.
kibana.index:
Default: ".kibana" Kibana uses an index in Elasticsearch to store saved searches, visualizations and dashboards. Kibana creates a new index if the index doesn’t already exist. If you configure a custom index, the name must be lowercase, and conform to Elasticsearch index name limitations.
kibana.autocompleteTimeout:
Default: "1000" Time in milliseconds to wait for autocomplete suggestions from Elasticsearch. This value must be a whole number greater than zero.
kibana.autocompleteTerminateAfter:
Default: "100000" Maximum number of documents loaded by each shard to generate autocomplete suggestions. This value must be a whole number greater than zero.
logging.dest:
Default: stdout Enables you specify a file where Kibana stores log output.
logging.json:
Default: false Logs output as JSON. When set to true, the logs will be formatted as JSON strings that include timestamp, log level, context, message text and any other metadata that may be associated with the log message itself. If logging.dest.stdout is set and there is no interactive terminal ("TTY"), this setting will default to true.
logging.quiet:
Default: false Set the value of this setting to true to suppress all logging output other than error messages.
logging.rotate:

[experimental] Specifies the options for the logging rotate feature. When not defined, all the sub options defaults would be applied. The following example shows a valid logging rotate configuration: 

logging.rotate:
  enabled: true
  everyBytes: 10485760
  keepFiles: 10
logging.rotate.enabled:
[experimental] Default: false Set the value of this setting to true to enable log rotation. If you do not have a logging.dest set that is different from stdout that feature would not take any effect.
logging.rotate.everyBytes:
[experimental] Default: 10485760 The maximum size of a log file (that is not an exact limit). After the limit is reached, a new log file is generated. The default size limit is 10485760 (10 MB) and this option should be in the range of 102400 (100KB) to 1073741824 (1GB).
logging.rotate.keepFiles:
[experimental] Default: 7 The number of most recent rotated log files to keep on disk. Older files are deleted during log rotation. The default value is 7. The logging.rotate.keepFiles option has to be in the range of 2 to 1024 files.
logging.rotate.pollingInterval:
[experimental] Default: 10000 The number of milliseconds for the polling strategy in case the logging.rotate.usePolling is enabled. That option has to be in the range of 5000 to 3600000 milliseconds.
logging.rotate.usePolling:
[experimental] Default: false By default we try to understand the best way to monitoring the log file. However, there is some systems where it could not be always accurate. In those cases, if needed, the polling method could be used enabling that option.
logging.silent:
Default: false Set the value of this setting to true to suppress all logging output.
logging.timezone
Default: UTC Set to the canonical timezone id (for example, America/Los_Angeles) to log events using that timezone. A list of timezones can be referenced at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tz_database_time_zones.
logging.verbose:
Default: false Set the value of this setting to true to log all events, including system usage information and all requests. Supported on Elastic Cloud Enterprise.
map.includeElasticMapsService:
Default: true Set to false to disable connections to Elastic Maps Service. When includeElasticMapsService is turned off, only the vector layers configured by map.regionmap and the tile layer configured by map.tilemap.url will be available in the Maps application, Coordinate map visualizations, and Region map visualizations.
map.proxyElasticMapsServiceInMaps:
Default: false Set to true to proxy all Maps application Elastic Maps Service requests through the Kibana server. This setting does not impact Coordinate map visualizations and Region map visualizations.
map.regionmap:

Specifies additional vector layers for use in Region Map visualizations. Supported on Elastic Cloud Enterprise. Each layer object points to an external vector file that contains a geojson FeatureCollection. The file must use the WGS84 coordinate reference system and only include polygons. If the file is hosted on a separate domain from Kibana, the server needs to be CORS-enabled so Kibana can download the file. The following example shows a valid regionmap configuration. 

map.regionmap:
  includeElasticMapsService: false
  layers:
     - name: "Departments of France"
       url: "http://my.cors.enabled.server.org/france_departements.geojson"
       attribution: "INRAP"
       fields:
          - name: "department"
            description: "Full department name"
          - name: "INSEE"
            description: "INSEE numeric identifier"
map.regionmap.includeElasticMapsService:
Turns on or off whether layers from the Elastic Maps Service should be included in the vector layer option list. Supported on Elastic Cloud Enterprise. By turning this off, only the layers that are configured here will be included. The default is true.
map.regionmap.layers[].attribution:
Optional. References the originating source of the geojson file. Supported on Elastic Cloud Enterprise.
map.regionmap.layers[].fields[]:
Mandatory. Each layer can contain multiple fields to indicate what properties from the geojson features you wish to expose. The example above shows how to define multiple properties. Supported on Elastic Cloud Enterprise.
map.regionmap.layers[].fields[].description:
Mandatory. The human readable text that is shown under the Options tab when building the Region Map visualization. Supported on Elastic Cloud Enterprise.
map.regionmap.layers[].fields[].name:
Mandatory. This value is used to do an inner-join between the document stored in Elasticsearch and the geojson file. For example, if the field in the geojson is called Location and has city names, there must be a field in Elasticsearch that holds the same values that Kibana can then use to lookup for the geoshape data. Supported on Elastic Cloud Enterprise.
map.regionmap.layers[].name:
Mandatory. A description of the map being provided. Supported on Elastic Cloud Enterprise.
map.regionmap.layers[].url:
Mandatory. The location of the geojson file as provided by a webserver. Supported on Elastic Cloud Enterprise.
map.tilemap.options.attribution:
Default: "© [Elastic Maps Service](https://www.elastic.co/elastic-maps-service)" The map attribution string. Supported on Elastic Cloud Enterprise.
map.tilemap.options.maxZoom:
Default: 10 The maximum zoom level. Supported on Elastic Cloud Enterprise.
map.tilemap.options.minZoom:
Default: 1 The minimum zoom level. Supported on Elastic Cloud Enterprise.
map.tilemap.options.subdomains:
An array of subdomains used by the tile service. Specify the position of the subdomain the URL with the token {s}. Supported on Elastic Cloud Enterprise.
map.tilemap.url:
The URL to the tileservice that Kibana uses to display map tiles in tilemap visualizations. Supported on Elastic Cloud Enterprise. By default, Kibana reads this url from an external metadata service, but users can still override this parameter to use their own Tile Map Service. For example: "https://tiles.elastic.co/v2/default/{z}/{x}/{y}.png?elastic_tile_service_tos=agree&my_app_name=kibana"
newsfeed.enabled:
Default: true Controls whether to enable the newsfeed system for the Kibana UI notification center. Set to false to disable the newsfeed system.
path.data:
Default: data The path where Kibana stores persistent data not saved in Elasticsearch.
pid.file:
Specifies the path where Kibana creates the process ID file.
ops.interval:
Default: 5000 Set the interval in milliseconds to sample system and process performance metrics. The minimum value is 100.
server.basePath:
Enables you to specify a path to mount Kibana at if you are running behind a proxy. Use the server.rewriteBasePath setting to tell Kibana if it should remove the basePath from requests it receives, and to prevent a deprecation warning at startup. This setting cannot end in a slash (/).
server.compression.enabled:
Default: true Set to false to disable HTTP compression for all responses.
server.compression.referrerWhitelist:
Default: none Specifies an array of trusted hostnames, such as the Kibana host, or a reverse proxy sitting in front of it. This determines whether HTTP compression may be used for responses, based on the request’s Referer header. This setting may not be used when server.compression.enabled is set to false.
server.cors:
Default: false Set to true to enable CORS support. This setting is required to configure server.cors.origin.
server.cors.origin:
Default: none Specifies origins. "origin" must be an array. To use this setting, you must set server.cors to true. To accept all origins, use server.cors.origin: ["*"].
server.customResponseHeaders:
Default: {} Header names and values to send on all responses to the client from the Kibana server.
server.host:
Default: "localhost" This setting specifies the host of the back end server. To allow remote users to connect, set the value to the IP address or DNS name of the Kibana server.
server.keepaliveTimeout:
Default: "120000" The number of milliseconds to wait for additional data before restarting the server.socketTimeout counter.
server.maxPayloadBytes:
Default: 1048576 The maximum payload size in bytes for incoming server requests.
server.name:
Default: "your-hostname" A human-readable display name that identifies this Kibana instance.
server.port:
Default: 5601 Kibana is served by a back end server. This setting specifies the port to use.
server.rewriteBasePath:
Default: deprecated Specifies whether Kibana should rewrite requests that are prefixed with server.basePath or require that they are rewritten by your reverse proxy. In Kibana 6.3 and earlier, the default is false. In Kibana 7.x, the setting is deprecated. In Kibana 8.0 and later, the default is true.
server.socketTimeout:
Default: "120000" The number of milliseconds to wait before closing an inactive socket.
server.ssl.certificate: and server.ssl.key:

Paths to a PEM-encoded X.509 certificate and its private key, respectively. These are used when enabling SSL for inbound requests from web browsers to the Kibana server.

These settings cannot be used in conjunction with server.ssl.keystore.path.

server.ssl.certificateAuthorities:
Paths to one or more PEM-encoded X.509 certificates. These certificates may consist of a root certificate authority (CA) and one or more intermediate CAs, which make up a trusted certificate chain for Kibana. This chain is used when a web browser creates an SSL connection with the Kibana server; the certificate chain is sent to the browser along with the end-entity certificate to establish trust. This chain is also used to determine whether client certificates should be trusted when PKI authentication is enabled. In addition to this setting, trusted certificates may be specified via server.ssl.keystore.path and/or server.ssl.truststore.path.
server.ssl.cipherSuites:
Default: ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256, ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256, ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384, ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384, DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256, ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256, DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256, ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA384, DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA384, ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA256, DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA256, HIGH,!aNULL, !eNULL, !EXPORT, !DES, !RC4, !MD5, !PSK, !SRP, !CAMELLIA. Details on the format, and the valid options, are available via the OpenSSL cipher list format documentation.
server.ssl.clientAuthentication:
Default: none Controls the server’s behavior in regard to requesting a certificate from client connections. Valid values are required, optional, and none. required forces a client to present a certificate, while optional requests a client certificate but the client is not required to present one.
server.ssl.enabled:
Default: "false" Enables SSL for inbound requests from the browser to the Kibana server. When set to true, a certificate and private key must be provided. These can be specified via server.ssl.keystore.path or the combination of server.ssl.certificate and server.ssl.key.
server.ssl.keyPassphrase:
The passphrase that will be used to decrypt the private key that is specified via server.ssl.key. This value is optional, as the key may not be encrypted.
server.ssl.keystore.path:

Path to a PKCS #12 file that contains an X.509 certificate with its private key. These are used when enabling SSL for inbound requests from web browsers to the Kibana server. If the file contains any additional certificates, those will be used as a trusted certificate chain for Kibana. This chain is used when a web browser creates an SSL connection with the Kibana server; the certificate chain is sent to the browser along with the end-entity certificate to establish trust. This chain is also used to determine whether client certificates should be trusted when PKI authentication is enabled. In addition to this setting, trusted certificates may be specified via server.ssl.certificateAuthorities and/or server.ssl.truststore.path.

This setting cannot be used in conjunction with server.ssl.certificate or server.ssl.key.

server.ssl.keystore.password:
The password that will be used to decrypt the key store and its private key. If your key store has no password, leave this unset. If your key store has an empty password, set this to "".
server.ssl.truststore.path:
Path to a PKCS #12 trust store that contains one or more X.509 certificates. These certificates may consist of a root certificate authority (CA) and one or more intermediate CAs, which make up a trusted certificate chain for Kibana. This chain is used when a web browser creates an SSL connection with the Kibana server; the certificate chain is sent to the browser along with the end-entity certificate to establish trust. This chain is also used to determine whether client certificates should be trusted when PKI authentication is enabled. In addition to this setting, trusted certificates may be specified via server.ssl.certificateAuthorities and/or server.ssl.keystore.path.
server.ssl.truststore.password:
The password that will be used to decrypt the trust store. If your trust store has no password, leave this unset. If your trust store has an empty password, set this to "".
server.ssl.redirectHttpFromPort:
Kibana will bind to this port and redirect all http requests to https over the port configured as server.port.
server.ssl.supportedProtocols:
Default: TLSv1.1, TLSv1.2 An array of supported protocols with versions. Valid protocols: TLSv1, TLSv1.1, TLSv1.2
server.xsrf.whitelist:
It is not recommended to disable protections for arbitrary API endpoints. Instead, supply the kbn-xsrf header. There are some scenarios where whitelisting is required, however, such as SAML and OpenID Connect Single Sign-On setups. The server.xsrf.whitelist setting requires the following format: 
*Default: [ ]* An array of API endpoints which should be exempt from Cross-Site Request Forgery ("XSRF") protections.
status.allowAnonymous:
Default: false If authentication is enabled, setting this to true enables unauthenticated users to access the Kibana server status API and status page.
telemetry.allowChangingOptInStatus
Default: true. If true, users are able to change the telemetry setting at a later time in Advanced Settings. If false, Kibana looks at the value of telemetry.optIn to determine whether to send telemetry data or not. telemetry.allowChangingOptInStatus and telemetry.optIn cannot be false at the same time.
telemetry.optIn
Default: true If true, telemetry data is sent to Elastic. If false, collection of telemetry data is disabled. To enable telemetry and prevent users from disabling it, set telemetry.allowChangingOptInStatus to false and telemetry.optIn to true.
telemetry.enabled
Default: true Reporting your cluster statistics helps us improve your user experience. Your data is never shared with anyone. Set to false to disable telemetry capabilities entirely. You can alternatively opt out through the Advanced Settings in Kibana.
vega.enableExternalUrls:
Default: false Set this value to true to allow Vega to use any URL to access external data sources and images. If false, Vega can only get data from Elasticsearch.
xpack.license_management.enabled
Default: true Set this value to false to disable the License Management user interface.
xpack.rollup.enabled:
Default: true Set this value to false to disable the Rollup user interface.
i18n.locale
Default: en Set this value to change the Kibana interface language. Valid locales are: en, zh-CN, ja-JP.
xpack.actions.enabledActionTypes:
Default: [ * ] Set this value to an array of action types that are enabled. An element of * indicates all action types registered are enabled. The action types provided by Kibana are: .server-log, .slack, .email, .index, .pagerduty, .webhook.
xpack.actions.whitelistedHosts:
Default: [ * ] Set this value to an array of host names which actions such as email, slack, pagerduty, and webhook can connect to. An element of * indicates any host can be connected to. An empty array indicates no hosts can be connected to.
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