Elastic Agent input plugin

The input-elastic_agent plugin is the next generation of the input-beats plugin. They currently share code and a common codebase.

  • Plugin version: v6.4.4
  • Released on: 2023-01-19
  • Changelog

For other versions, see the Versioned plugin docs.

Getting Help

For questions about the plugin, open a topic in the Discuss forums. For bugs or feature requests, open an issue in Github. For the list of Elastic supported plugins, please consult the Elastic Support Matrix.

Description

This input plugin enables Logstash to receive events from the Elastic Agent framework.

The following example shows how to configure Logstash to listen on port 5044 for incoming Elastic Agent connections and to index into Elasticsearch.

input {
  elastic_agent {
    port => 5044
  }
}

output {
  elasticsearch {
    hosts => ["http://localhost:9200"]
    data_stream => "true"
  }
}

Events indexed into Elasticsearch with the Logstash configuration shown here will be similar to events directly indexed by Elastic Agent into Elasticsearch.

Memory usage

This plugin uses "off-heap" direct memory in addition to heap memory. By default, a JVM’s off-heap direct memory limit is the same as the heap size. For example, setting -Xmx10G without setting the direct memory limit will allocate 10GB for heap and an additional 10GB for direct memory, for a total of 20GB allocated. You can set the amount of direct memory with -XX:MaxDirectMemorySize in Logstash JVM Settings. Consider setting direct memory to half of the heap size. Setting direct memory too low decreases the performance of ingestion.

Be sure that heap and direct memory combined does not exceed the total memory available on the server to avoid an OutOfDirectMemoryError

Event Metadata and the Elastic Common Schema (ECS)

When decoding Elastic Agent events, this plugin adds two fields related to the event: the deprecated host which contains the hostname provided by Elastic Agent and the ip_address containing the remote address of the client’s connection. When ECS compatibility mode is enabled these are now moved in ECS compatible namespace. Here’s how ECS compatibility mode affects output.

ECS `disabled` ECS `v1`, `v8` Availability Description

[host]

[@metadata][input][beats][host][name]

Always

Name or address of the Elastic Agent host

[@metadata][ip_address]

[@metadata][input][beats][host][ip]

Always

IP address of the Elastic Agent client

[@metadata][tls_peer][status]

[@metadata][tls_peer][status]

When SSL related fields are populated

Contains "verified"/"unverified" labels in disabled, true/false in v1/v8

[@metadata][tls_peer][protocol]

[@metadata][input][beats][tls][version_protocol]

When SSL status is "verified"

Contains the TLS version used (e.g. TLSv1.2)

[@metadata][tls_peer][subject]

[@metadata][input][beats][tls][client][subject]

When SSL status is "verified"

Contains the identity name of the remote end (e.g. CN=artifacts-no-kpi.elastic.co)

[@metadata][tls_peer][cipher_suite]

[@metadata][input][beats][tls][cipher]

When SSL status is "verified"

Contains the name of cipher suite used (e.g. TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256)

Elastic Agent input configuration options

This plugin supports the following configuration options plus the Common Options described later.

Also see Common Options for a list of options supported by all input plugins.

 

add_hostname

Deprecated in 6.0.0.

The default value has been changed to false. In 7.0.0 this setting will be removed

  • Value type is boolean
  • Default value is false

Flag to determine whether to add host field to event using the value supplied by the Elastic Agent in the hostname field.

cipher_suites

Deprecated in 6.4.0.

Replaced by ssl_cipher_suites

The list of cipher suites to use, listed by priorities.

client_inactivity_timeout

  • Value type is number
  • Default value is 60

Close Idle clients after X seconds of inactivity.

ecs_compatibility

  • Value type is string
  • Supported values are:

    • disabled: unstructured connection metadata added at root level
    • v1: structured connection metadata added under ECS v1 compliant namespaces
    • v8: structured connection metadata added under ECS v8 compliant namespaces
  • Default value depends on which version of Logstash is running:

    • When Logstash provides a pipeline.ecs_compatibility setting, its value is used as the default
    • Otherwise, the default value is disabled.

Refer to ECS mapping for detailed information.

executor_threads

  • Value type is number
  • Default value is equal to the number of CPU cores (1 executor thread per CPU core).

The number of threads to be used to process incoming beats requests. By default, the Beats Input creates a number of threads equal to the number of CPU cores. These threads handle incoming connections, reading from established sockets, and executing most of the tasks related to network connection management. Parsing the Lumberjack protocol is offloaded to a dedicated thread pool.

Generally you don’t need to touch this setting. In case you are sending very large events and observing "OutOfDirectMemory" exceptions, you may want to reduce this number to half or 1/4 of the CPU cores. This change reduces the number of threads decompressing batches of data into direct memory. However, this will only be a mitigating tweak, as the proper solution may require resizing your Logstash deployment, either by increasing number of Logstash nodes or increasing the JVM’s Direct Memory.

host

  • Value type is string
  • Default value is "0.0.0.0"

The IP address to listen on.

include_codec_tag

  • Value type is boolean
  • Default value is true

port

  • This is a required setting.
  • Value type is number
  • There is no default value for this setting.

The port to listen on.

ssl

  • Value type is boolean
  • Default value is false

Events are by default sent in plain text. You can enable encryption by setting ssl to true and configuring the ssl_certificate and ssl_key options.

ssl_certificate

  • Value type is path
  • There is no default value for this setting.

SSL certificate to use.

ssl_certificate_authorities

  • Value type is array
  • Default value is []

Validate client certificates against these authorities. You can define multiple files or paths. All the certificates will be read and added to the trust store. You need to configure the ssl_verify_mode to peer or force_peer to enable the verification.

ssl_cipher_suites

  • Value type is array
  • Default value is ['TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384', 'TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256', 'TLS_CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256', 'TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384', 'TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384', 'TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256', 'TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256', 'TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256', 'TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256', 'TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA384', 'TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA384', 'TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256', 'TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256']

The list of cipher suites to use, listed by priorities. This default list applies for OpenJDK 11.0.14 and higher. For older JDK versions, the default list includes only suites supported by that version. For example, the ChaCha20 family of ciphers is not supported in older versions.

ssl_handshake_timeout

  • Value type is number
  • Default value is 10000

Time in milliseconds for an incomplete ssl handshake to timeout

ssl_key

  • Value type is path
  • There is no default value for this setting.

SSL key to use. This key must be in the PKCS8 format and PEM encoded. You can use the openssl pkcs8 command to complete the conversion. For example, the command to convert a PEM encoded PKCS1 private key to a PEM encoded, non-encrypted PKCS8 key is:

openssl pkcs8 -inform PEM -in path/to/logstash.key -topk8 -nocrypt -outform PEM -out path/to/logstash.pkcs8.key

ssl_key_passphrase

  • Value type is password
  • There is no default value for this setting.

SSL key passphrase to use.

ssl_peer_metadata

  • Value type is boolean
  • Default value is false

Enables storing client certificate information in event’s metadata.

This option is only valid when ssl_verify_mode is set to peer or force_peer.

ssl_supported_protocols

  • Value type is array
  • Allowed values are: 'TLSv1.1', 'TLSv1.2', 'TLSv1.3'
  • Default depends on the JDK being used. With up-to-date Logstash, the default is ['TLSv1.2', 'TLSv1.3']. 'TLSv1.1' is not considered secure and is only provided for legacy applications.

List of allowed SSL/TLS versions to use when establishing a connection to the HTTP endpoint.

For Java 8 'TLSv1.3' is supported only since 8u262 (AdoptOpenJDK), but requires that you set the LS_JAVA_OPTS="-Djdk.tls.client.protocols=TLSv1.3" system property in Logstash.

If you configure the plugin to use 'TLSv1.1' on any recent JVM, such as the one packaged with Logstash, the protocol is disabled by default and needs to be enabled manually by changing jdk.tls.disabledAlgorithms in the $JDK_HOME/conf/security/java.security configuration file. That is, TLSv1.1 needs to be removed from the list.

ssl_verify_mode

  • Value can be any of: none, peer, force_peer
  • Default value is "none"

By default the server doesn’t do any client verification.

peer will make the server ask the client to provide a certificate. If the client provides a certificate, it will be validated.

force_peer will make the server ask the client to provide a certificate. If the client doesn’t provide a certificate, the connection will be closed.

This option needs to be used with ssl_certificate_authorities and a defined list of CAs.

tls_max_version

Deprecated in 6.4.0.

Replaced by ssl_supported_protocols

The maximum TLS version allowed for the encrypted connections. The value must be the one of the following: 1.1 for TLS 1.1, 1.2 for TLS 1.2, 1.3 for TLSv1.3

tls_min_version

Deprecated in 6.4.0.

Replaced by ssl_supported_protocols

The minimum TLS version allowed for the encrypted connections. The value must be one of the following: 1.1 for TLS 1.1, 1.2 for TLS 1.2, 1.3 for TLS 1.3

Common Options

The following configuration options are supported by all input plugins:

Setting Input type Required

add_field

hash

No

codec

codec

No

enable_metric

boolean

No

id

string

No

tags

array

No

type

string

No

Details

 

add_field

  • Value type is hash
  • Default value is {}

Add a field to an event

codec

  • Value type is codec
  • Default value is "plain"

The codec used for input data. Input codecs are a convenient method for decoding your data before it enters the input, without needing a separate filter in your Logstash pipeline.

enable_metric

  • Value type is boolean
  • Default value is true

Disable or enable metric logging for this specific plugin instance by default we record all the metrics we can, but you can disable metrics collection for a specific plugin.

id

  • Value type is string
  • There is no default value for this setting.

Add a unique ID to the plugin configuration. If no ID is specified, Logstash will generate one. It is strongly recommended to set this ID in your configuration. This is particularly useful when you have two or more plugins of the same type, for example, if you have 2 elastic_agent inputs. Adding a named ID in this case will help in monitoring Logstash when using the monitoring APIs.

input {
  elastic_agent {
    id => "my_plugin_id"
  }
}

Variable substitution in the id field only supports environment variables and does not support the use of values from the secret store.

tags

  • Value type is array
  • There is no default value for this setting.

Add any number of arbitrary tags to your event.

This can help with processing later.

type

  • Value type is string
  • There is no default value for this setting.

Add a type field to all events handled by this input.

Types are used mainly for filter activation.

The type is stored as part of the event itself, so you can also use the type to search for it in Kibana.

If you try to set a type on an event that already has one (for example when you send an event from a shipper to an indexer) then a new input will not override the existing type. A type set at the shipper stays with that event for its life even when sent to another Logstash server.