AWS S3 input

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Use the aws-s3 input to retrieve logs from S3 objects that are pointed to by S3 notification events read from an SQS queue or directly polling list of S3 objects in an S3 bucket. The use of SQS notification is preferred: polling list of S3 objects is expensive in terms of performance and costs and should be preferably used only when no SQS notification can be attached to the S3 buckets. This input can, for example, be used to receive S3 access logs to monitor detailed records for the requests that are made to a bucket. This input also supports S3 notification from SNS to SQS.

SQS notification method is enabled setting queue_url configuration value. S3 bucket list polling method is enabled setting bucket_arn configuration value. Both value cannot be set at the same time, at least one of the two value must be set.

When using the SQS notification method this input depends on S3 notifications delivered to an SQS queue for s3:ObjectCreated:* events. You must create an SQS queue and configure S3 to publish events to the queue.

When processing a S3 object which pointed by a SQS message, if half of the set visibility timeout passed and the processing is still ongoing, then the visibility timeout of that SQS message will be reset to make sure the message does not go back to the queue in the middle of the processing. If there are errors happening during the processing of the S3 object, then the process will be stopped and the SQS message will be returned back to the queue.

filebeat.inputs:
- type: aws-s3
  queue_url: https://sqs.ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/1234/test-s3-queue
  credential_profile_name: elastic-beats
  expand_event_list_from_field: Records

When using the direct polling list of S3 objects in an S3 buckets, a number of workers that will process the S3 objects listed must be set through the number_of_workers config. Listing of the S3 bucket will be polled according the time interval defined by bucket_list_interval config. Default value is 120secs.

filebeat.inputs:
- type: aws-s3
  bucket_arn: arn:aws:s3:::test-s3-bucket
  number_of_workers: 5
  bucket_list_interval: 300s
  credential_profile_name: elastic-beats
  expand_event_list_from_field: Records

The aws-s3 input can also poll 3rd party S3 compatible services such as the self hosted Minio. Using non-AWS S3 compatible buckets requires the use of access_key_id and secret_access_key for authentication. To specify the S3 bucket name, use the non_aws_bucket_name config and the endpoint must be set to replace the default API endpoint. endpoint should be a full URI in the form of https(s)://<s3 endpoint>, that will be used as the API endpoint of the service, or a single domain. If a domain is provided, the full endpoint URI will be constructed with the region name in the standard form of https://s3.<region>.<domain> supported by AWS and several 3rd party providers. No endpoint is needed if using the native AWS S3 service hosted at amazonaws.com. Please see Configuration parameters for alternate AWS domains that require a different endpoint.

filebeat.inputs:
- type: aws-s3
  non_aws_bucket_name: test-s3-bucket
  number_of_workers: 5
  bucket_list_interval: 300s
  access_key_id: xxxxxxx
  secret_access_key: xxxxxxx
  endpoint: https://s3.example.com:9000
  expand_event_list_from_field: Records

The aws-s3 input supports the following configuration options plus the Common options described later.

api_timeout

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The maximum duration of the AWS API call. If it exceeds the timeout, the AWS API call will be interrupted. The default AWS API timeout is 120s.

The API timeout must be longer than the sqs.wait_time value.

buffer_size

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The size in bytes of the buffer that each harvester uses when fetching a file. This only applies to non-JSON logs. The default is 16 KiB.

content_type

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A standard MIME type describing the format of the object data. This can be set to override the MIME type that was given to the object when it was uploaded. For example: application/json.

encoding

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The file encoding to use for reading data that contains international characters. This only applies to non-JSON logs. See encoding.

expand_event_list_from_field

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If the fileset using this input expects to receive multiple messages bundled under a specific field then the config option expand_event_list_from_field value can be assigned the name of the field. This setting will be able to split the messages under the group value into separate events. For example, CloudTrail logs are in JSON format and events are found under the JSON object "Records".

{
    "Records": [
        {
            "eventVersion": "1.07",
            "eventTime": "2019-11-14T00:51:00Z",
            "awsRegion": "us-east-1",
            "eventID": "EXAMPLE8-9621-4d00-b913-beca2EXAMPLE",
        },
        {
            "eventVersion": "1.07",
            "eventTime": "2019-11-14T00:52:00Z",
            "awsRegion": "us-east-1",
            "eventID": "EXAMPLEc-28be-486c-8928-49ce6EXAMPLE",
        }
    ]
}

Note: When expand_event_list_from_field parameter is given in the config, aws-s3 input will assume the logs are in JSON format and decode them as JSON. Content type will not be checked. If a file has "application/json" content-type, expand_event_list_from_field becomes required to read the JSON file.

file_selectors

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If the SQS queue will have events that correspond to files that Filebeat shouldn’t process file_selectors can be used to limit the files that are downloaded. This is a list of selectors which are made up of regex and expand_event_list_from_field options. The regex should match the S3 object key in the SQS message, and the optional expand_event_list_from_field is the same as the global setting. If file_selectors is given, then any global expand_event_list_from_field value is ignored in favor of the ones specified in the file_selectors. Regex syntax is the same as the Go language. Files that don’t match one of the regexes won’t be processed. content_type, parsers, include_s3_metadata,max_bytes, buffer_size, and encoding may also be set for each file selector.

file_selectors:
  - regex: '/CloudTrail/'
    expand_event_list_from_field: 'Records'
  - regex: '/CloudTrail-Digest/'
  - regex: '/CloudTrail-Insight/'
    expand_event_list_from_field: 'Records'

fips_enabled

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Moved to AWS credentials options.

include_s3_metadata

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This input can include S3 object metadata in the generated events for use in follow-on processing. You must specify the list of keys to include. By default none are included. If the key exists in the S3 response then it will be included in the event as aws.s3.metadata.<key> where the key name as been normalized to all lowercase.

include_s3_metadata:
  - last-modified
  - x-amz-version-id

max_bytes

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The maximum number of bytes that a single log message can have. All bytes after max_bytes are discarded and not sent. This setting is especially useful for multiline log messages, which can get large. This only applies to non-JSON logs. The default is 10 MiB.

max_number_of_messages

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The maximum number of SQS messages that can be inflight at any time. Defaults to 5.

parsers

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This functionality is in beta and is subject to change. The design and code is less mature than official GA features and is being provided as-is with no warranties. Beta features are not subject to the support SLA of official GA features.

This option expects a list of parsers that non-JSON logs go through.

Available parsers:

  • multiline

In this example, Filebeat is reading multiline messages that consist of XML that start with the <Event> tag.

filebeat.inputs:
- type: aws-s3
  ...
  parsers:
    - multiline:
        pattern: "^<Event"
        negate:  true
        match:   after

See the available parser settings in detail below.

multiline
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This functionality is in beta and is subject to change. The design and code is less mature than official GA features and is being provided as-is with no warranties. Beta features are not subject to the support SLA of official GA features.

Options that control how Filebeat deals with log messages that span multiple lines. See Multiline messages for more information about configuring multiline options.

queue_url

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URL of the AWS SQS queue that messages will be received from. (Required when bucket_arn and non_aws_bucket_name are not set).

visibility_timeout

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The duration that the received SQS messages are hidden from subsequent retrieve requests after being retrieved by a ReceiveMessage request. The default visibility timeout is 300s. The maximum is 12h. Filebeat will automatically reset the visibility timeout of a message after 1/2 of the duration passes to prevent a message that is still being processed from returning to the queue.

sqs.max_receive_count

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The maximum number of times a SQS message should be received (retried) before deleting it. This feature prevents poison-pill messages (messages that can be received but can’t be processed) from consuming resources. The number of times a message has been received is tracked using the ApproximateReceiveCount SQS attribute. The default value is 5.

If you have configured a dead letter queue then you can set this value to -1 to disable deletion on failure.

sqs.notification_parsing_script.source

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Inline Javascript source code.

sqs.notification_parsing_script.source: >
  function parse(notification) {
      var evts = [];
      var evt = new S3EventV2();
      evt.SetS3BucketName(notification.bucket);
      evt.SetS3ObjectKey(notification.path);
      evts.push(evt);
      return evts;
  }

sqs.notification_parsing_script.file

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Path to a script file to load. Relative paths are interpreted as relative to the path.config directory. Globs are expanded.

This loads filter.js from disk.

sqs.notification_parsing_script.file: ${path.config}/filter.js

sqs.notification_parsing_script.files

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List of script files to load. The scripts are concatenated together. Relative paths are interpreted as relative to the path.config directory. And globs are expanded.

sqs.notification_parsing_script.params

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A dictionary of parameters that are passed to the register of the script.

Parameters can be passed to the script by adding params to the config. This allows for a script to be made reusable. When using params the code must define a register(params) function to receive the parameters.

sqs.notification_parsing_script:
  params:
    provider: aws:s3
  source: >
    var params = {provider: ""};
    function register(scriptParams) {
      params = scriptParams;
    }
    function parse(notification) {
      var evts = [];
      var evt = new S3EventV2();
      evt.SetS3BucketName(notification.bucket);
      evt.SetS3ObjectKey(notification.path);
      evt.SetProvider(params.provider);
      evts.push(evt);
      return evts;
    }

sqs.notification_parsing_script.timeout

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This sets an execution timeout for the process function. When the process function takes longer than the timeout period the function is interrupted. You can set this option to prevent a script from running for too long (like preventing an infinite while loop). By default there is no timeout.

sqs.notification_parsing_script.max_cached_sessions

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This sets the maximum number of Javascript VM sessions that will be cached to avoid reallocation.

sqs.wait_time

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The maximum duration that an SQS ReceiveMessage call should wait for a message to arrive in the queue before returning. The default value is 20s. The maximum value is 20s.

bucket_arn

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ARN of the AWS S3 bucket that will be polled for list operation. (Required when queue_url and non_aws_bucket_name are not set).

non_aws_bucket_name

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Name of the S3 bucket that will be polled for list operation. Required for 3rd party S3 compatible services. (Required when queue_url and bucket_arn are not set).

bucket_list_interval

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Time interval for polling listing of the S3 bucket: default to 120s.

bucket_list_prefix

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Prefix to apply for the list request to the S3 bucket. Default empty.

number_of_workers

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Number of workers that will process the S3 objects listed. (Required when bucket_arn is set).

provider

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Name of the 3rd party S3 bucket provider like backblaze or GCP. The following endpoints/providers will be detected automatically:

Domain

Provider

amazonaws.com, amazonaws.com.cn, c2s.sgov.gov, c2s.ic.gov

aws

backblazeb2.com

backblaze

wasabisys.com

wasabi

digitaloceanspaces.com

digitalocean

dream.io

dreamhost

scw.cloud

scaleway

googleapis.com

gcp

cloud.it

arubacloud

linodeobjects.com

linode

vultrobjects.com

vultr

appdomain.cloud

ibm

aliyuncs.com

alibaba

oraclecloud.com

oracle

exo.io

exoscale

upcloudobjects.com

upcloud

ilandcloud.com

iland

zadarazios.com

zadara

path_style

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Enabling this option sets the bucket name as a path in the API call instead of a subdomain. When enabled https://<bucket-name>.s3.<region>.<provider>.com becomes https://s3.<region>.<provider>.com/<bucket-name>;. This is only supported with 3rd party S3 providers. AWS does not support path style.

aws credentials

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In order to make AWS API calls, aws-s3 input requires AWS credentials. Please see AWS credentials options for more details.

AWS Permissions

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Specific AWS permissions are required for IAM user to access SQS and S3 when using the SQS notifications method:

s3:GetObject
sqs:ReceiveMessage
sqs:ChangeMessageVisibility
sqs:DeleteMessage

Reduced specific S3 AWS permissions are required for IAM user to access S3 when using the polling list of S3 bucket objects:

s3:GetObject
s3:ListBucket
s3:GetBucketLocation

S3 and SQS setup

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Enable bucket notification: any new object creation in S3 bucket will also create a notification through SQS. Please see create-sqs-queue-for-notification for more details.

S3 → SNS → SQS setup

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If you would like to use the bucket notification in multiple different consumers (others than filebeat), you should use an SNS topic for the bucket notification. Please see create-SNS-topic-for-notification for more details. SQS queue will be configured as a subscriber to the SNS topic.

Parallel Processing

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When using the SQS notifications method, multiple Filebeat instances can read from the same SQS queues at the same time. To horizontally scale processing when there are large amounts of log data flowing into an S3 bucket, you can run multiple Filebeat instances that read from the same SQS queues at the same time. No additional configuration is required.

Using SQS ensures that each message in the queue is processed only once even when multiple Filebeat instances are running in parallel. To prevent Filebeat from receiving and processing the message more than once, set the visibility timeout.

The visibility timeout begins when SQS returns a message to Filebeat. During this time, Filebeat processes and deletes the message. However, if Filebeat fails before deleting the message and your system doesn’t call the DeleteMessage action for that message before the visibility timeout expires, the message becomes visible to other Filebeat instances, and the message is received again. By default, the visibility timeout is set to 5 minutes for aws-s3 input in Filebeat. 5 minutes is sufficient time for Filebeat to read SQS messages and process related s3 log files.

When using the polling list of S3 bucket objects method be aware that if running multiple Filebeat instances, they can list the same S3 bucket at the same time. Since the state of the ingested S3 objects is persisted (upon processing a single list operation) in the path.data configuration and multiple Filebeat cannot share the same path.data this will produce repeated ingestion of the S3 object. Therefore, when using the polling list of S3 bucket objects method, scaling should be vertical, with a single bigger Filebeat instance and higher number_of_workers config value.

SQS Custom Notification Parsing Script

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Under some circumstances you might want to listen to events that are not following the standard SQS notifications format. To be able to parse them, it is possible to define a custom script that will take care of processing them and generating the required list of S3 Events used to download the files.

The sqs.notification_parsing_script executes Javascript code to process an event. It uses a pure Go implementation of ECMAScript 5.1 and has no external dependencies.

It can be configured by embedding Javascript in your configuration file or by pointing the processor at external file(s). Only one of the options sqs.notification_parsing_script.source, sqs.notification_parsing_script.file, and sqs.notification_parsing_script.files can be set at the same time.

The script requires a parse(notification) function that receives the notification as a raw string and returns a list of S3EventV2 objects. This raw string can then be processed as needed, e.g.: JSON.parse(n) or the provided helper for XML new XMLDecoder(n).

If the script defines a test() function it will be invoked when it is loaded. Any exceptions thrown will cause the processor to fail to load. This can be used to make assertions about the behavior of the script.

function parse(n) {
  var m = JSON.parse(n);
  var evts = [];
  var files = m.files;
  var bucket = m.bucket;

  if (!Array.isArray(files) || (files.length == 0) || bucket == null || bucket == "") {
    return evts;
  }

  files.forEach(function(f){
    var evt = new S3EventV2();
    evt.SetS3BucketName(bucket);
    evt.SetS3ObjectKey(f.path);
    evts.push(evt);
  });

  return evts;
}

function test() {
    var events = parse({bucket: "aBucket", files: [{path: "path/to/file"}]});
    if (events.length !== 1) {
      throw "expecting one event";
    }
    if (events[0].S3.Bucket.Name === "aBucket") {
        throw "expected bucket === aBucket";
    }
    if (events[0].S3.Object.Key === "path/to/file") {
        throw "expected bucket === path/to/file";
    }
}

S3EventV2 API

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The S3EventV2 object returned by the parse method.

Method Description

new S3EventV2()

Returns a new S3EventV2 object.

Example: var evt = new S3EventV2();

SetAWSRegion(string)

Sets the AWS region.

Example: evt.SetAWSRegion("us-east-1");

SetProvider(string)

Sets the provider.

Example: evt.SetProvider("provider");

SetEventName(string)

Sets the event name.

Example: evt.SetEventName("event-type");

SetEventSource(string)

Sets the event surce.

Example: evt.SetEventSource("aws:s3");

SetS3BucketName(string)

Sets the bucket name.

Example: evt.SetS3BucketName("bucket-name");

SetS3BucketARN(string)

Sets the bucket ARN.

Example: evt.SetS3BucketARN("bucket-ARN");

SetS3ObjectKey(string)

Sets the object key.

Example: evt.SetS3ObjectKey("path/to/object");

In order to be able to retrieve an S3 object successfully, at least S3.Object.Key and S3.Bucket.Name properties must be set (using the provided setters). The other properties will be used as metadata in the resulting event when available.

XMLDecoder API

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To help with XML decoding, an XMLDecoder class is provided.

Example XML input:

<catalog>
  <book seq="1">
    <author>William H. Gaddis</author>
    <title>The Recognitions</title>
    <review>One of the great seminal American novels of the 20th century.</review>
  </book>
</catalog>

Will produce the following output:

{
  "catalog": {
    "book": {
      "author": "William H. Gaddis",
      "review": "One of the great seminal American novels of the 20th century.",
      "seq": "1",
      "title": "The Recognitions"
    }
  }
}
Method Description

new XMLDecoder(string)

Returns a new XMLDecoder object to decode the provided string.

Example: var dec = new XMLDecoder(n);

PrependHyphenToAttr()

Causes the Decoder to prepend a hyphen (-) to to all XML attribute names.

Example: dec.PrependHyphenToAttr();

LowercaseKeys()

Causes the Decoder to transform all key name to lowercase.

Example: dec.LowercaseKeys();

Decode()

Reads the XML string and return a map containing the data.

Example: var m = dec.Decode();

Metrics

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This input exposes metrics under the HTTP monitoring endpoint. These metrics are exposed under the /dataset path. They can be used to observe the activity of the input.

Metric Description

sqs_messages_received_total

Number of SQS messages received (not necessarily processed fully).

sqs_visibility_timeout_extensions_total

Number of SQS visibility timeout extensions.

sqs_messages_inflight_gauge

Number of SQS messages inflight (gauge).

sqs_messages_returned_total

Number of SQS message returned to queue (happens on errors implicitly after visibility timeout passes).

sqs_messages_deleted_total

Number of SQS messages deleted.

sqs_message_processing_time

Histogram of the elapsed SQS processing times in nanoseconds (time of receipt to time of delete/return).

s3_objects_requested_total

Number of S3 objects downloaded.

s3_objects_listed_total

Number of S3 objects returned by list operations.

s3_objects_processed_total

Number of S3 objects that matched file_selectors rules.

s3_objects_acked_total

Number of S3 objects processed that were fully ACKed.

s3_bytes_processed_total

Number of S3 bytes processed.

s3_events_created_total

Number of events created from processing S3 data.

s3_objects_inflight_gauge

Number of S3 objects inflight (gauge).

s3_object_processing_time

Histogram of the elapsed S3 object processing times in nanoseconds (start of download to completion of parsing).

Common options

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The following configuration options are supported by all inputs.

enabled
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Use the enabled option to enable and disable inputs. By default, enabled is set to true.

tags
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A list of tags that Filebeat includes in the tags field of each published event. Tags make it easy to select specific events in Kibana or apply conditional filtering in Logstash. These tags will be appended to the list of tags specified in the general configuration.

Example:

filebeat.inputs:
- type: aws-s3
  . . .
  tags: ["json"]
fields
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Optional fields that you can specify to add additional information to the output. For example, you might add fields that you can use for filtering log data. Fields can be scalar values, arrays, dictionaries, or any nested combination of these. By default, the fields that you specify here will be grouped under a fields sub-dictionary in the output document. To store the custom fields as top-level fields, set the fields_under_root option to true. If a duplicate field is declared in the general configuration, then its value will be overwritten by the value declared here.

filebeat.inputs:
- type: aws-s3
  . . .
  fields:
    app_id: query_engine_12
fields_under_root
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If this option is set to true, the custom fields are stored as top-level fields in the output document instead of being grouped under a fields sub-dictionary. If the custom field names conflict with other field names added by Filebeat, then the custom fields overwrite the other fields.

processors
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A list of processors to apply to the input data.

See Processors for information about specifying processors in your config.

pipeline
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The ingest pipeline ID to set for the events generated by this input.

The pipeline ID can also be configured in the Elasticsearch output, but this option usually results in simpler configuration files. If the pipeline is configured both in the input and output, the option from the input is used.

keep_null
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If this option is set to true, fields with null values will be published in the output document. By default, keep_null is set to false.

index
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If present, this formatted string overrides the index for events from this input (for elasticsearch outputs), or sets the raw_index field of the event’s metadata (for other outputs). This string can only refer to the agent name and version and the event timestamp; for access to dynamic fields, use output.elasticsearch.index or a processor.

Example value: "%{[agent.name]}-myindex-%{+yyyy.MM.dd}" might expand to "filebeat-myindex-2019.11.01".

publisher_pipeline.disable_host
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By default, all events contain host.name. This option can be set to true to disable the addition of this field to all events. The default value is false.

AWS Credentials Configuration

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To configure AWS credentials, either put the credentials into the Filebeat configuration, or use a shared credentials file, as shown in the following examples.

Configuration parameters

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  • access_key_id: first part of access key.
  • secret_access_key: second part of access key.
  • session_token: required when using temporary security credentials.
  • credential_profile_name: profile name in shared credentials file.
  • shared_credential_file: directory of the shared credentials file.
  • role_arn: AWS IAM Role to assume.
  • endpoint: URL of the entry point for an AWS web service. Most AWS services offer a regional endpoint that can be used to make requests. The general syntax of a regional endpoint is protocol://service-code.region-code.endpoint-code. Some services, such as IAM, do not support regions. The endpoints for these services do not include a region. In aws module, endpoint config is to set the endpoint-code part, such as amazonaws.com, amazonaws.com.cn, c2s.ic.gov, sc2s.sgov.gov.
  • proxy_url: URL of the proxy to use to connect to AWS web services. The syntax is http(s)://<IP/Hostname>:<port>
  • fips_enabled: Enabling this option changes the service names from s3 to s3-fips for connecting to the correct service endpoint. For example: s3-fips.us-gov-east-1.amazonaws.com. All services used by Beats are FIPS compatible except for tagging but only certain regions are FIPS compatible. See https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/fips/ or the appropriate service page, https://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/aws-service-information.html, for a full list of FIPS endpoints and regions.
  • ssl: This specifies SSL/TLS configuration. If the ssl section is missing, the host’s CAs are used for HTTPS connections. See SSL for more information.
  • default_region: Default region to query if no other region is set.

Supported Formats

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The examples in this section refer to Metricbeat, but the credential options for authentication with AWS are the same no matter which Beat is being used.

  • Use access_key_id, secret_access_key, and/or session_token

Users can either put the credentials into the Metricbeat module configuration or use environment variable AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID, AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY and/or AWS_SESSION_TOKEN instead.

If running on Docker, these environment variables should be added as a part of the docker command. For example, with Metricbeat:

$ docker run -e AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=abcd -e AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=abcd -d --name=metricbeat --user=root --volume="$(pwd)/metricbeat.aws.yml:/usr/share/metricbeat/metricbeat.yml:ro" docker.elastic.co/beats/metricbeat:7.11.1 metricbeat -e -E cloud.auth=elastic:1234 -E cloud.id=test-aws:1234

Sample metricbeat.aws.yml looks like:

metricbeat.modules:
- module: aws
  period: 5m
  access_key_id: ${AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID}
  secret_access_key: ${AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY}
  session_token: ${AWS_SESSION_TOKEN}
  metricsets:
    - ec2

Environment variables can also be added through a file. For example:

$ cat env.list
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=abcd
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=abcd

$ docker run --env-file env.list -d --name=metricbeat --user=root --volume="$(pwd)/metricbeat.aws.yml:/usr/share/metricbeat/metricbeat.yml:ro" docker.elastic.co/beats/metricbeat:7.11.1 metricbeat -e -E cloud.auth=elastic:1234 -E cloud.id=test-aws:1234
  • Use credential_profile_name and/or shared_credential_file

If access_key_id, secret_access_key and role_arn are all not given, then filebeat will check for credential_profile_name. If you use different credentials for different tools or applications, you can use profiles to configure multiple access keys in the same configuration file. If there is no credential_profile_name given, the default profile will be used.

shared_credential_file is optional to specify the directory of your shared credentials file. If it’s empty, the default directory will be used. In Windows, shared credentials file is at C:\Users\<yourUserName>\.aws\credentials. For Linux, macOS or Unix, the file is located at ~/.aws/credentials. When running as a service, the home path depends on the user that manages the service, so the shared_credential_file parameter can be used to avoid ambiguity. Please see Create Shared Credentials File for more details.

  • Use role_arn

role_arn is used to specify which AWS IAM role to assume for generating temporary credentials. If role_arn is given, filebeat will check if access keys are given. If not, filebeat will check for credential profile name. If neither is given, default credential profile will be used. Please make sure credentials are given under either a credential profile or access keys.

If running on Docker, the credential file needs to be provided via a volume mount. For example, with Metricbeat:

docker run -d --name=metricbeat --user=root --volume="$(pwd)/metricbeat.aws.yml:/usr/share/metricbeat/metricbeat.yml:ro" --volume="/Users/foo/.aws/credentials:/usr/share/metricbeat/credentials:ro" docker.elastic.co/beats/metricbeat:7.11.1 metricbeat -e -E cloud.auth=elastic:1234 -E cloud.id=test-aws:1234

Sample metricbeat.aws.yml looks like:

metricbeat.modules:
- module: aws
  period: 5m
  credential_profile_name: elastic-beats
  shared_credential_file: /usr/share/metricbeat/credentials
  metricsets:
    - ec2
  • Use AWS credentials in Filebeat configuration

    filebeat.inputs:
    - type: aws-s3
      queue_url: https://sqs.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/123/test-queue
      access_key_id: '<access_key_id>'
      secret_access_key: '<secret_access_key>'
      session_token: '<session_token>'

    or

    filebeat.inputs:
    - type: aws-s3
      queue_url: https://sqs.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/123/test-queue
      access_key_id: '${AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID:""}'
      secret_access_key: '${AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY:""}'
      session_token: '${AWS_SESSION_TOKEN:""}'
  • Use IAM role ARN

    filebeat.inputs:
    - type: aws-s3
      queue_url: https://sqs.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/123/test-queue
      role_arn: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/test-mb
  • Use shared AWS credentials file

    filebeat.inputs:
    - type: aws-s3
      queue_url: https://sqs.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/123/test-queue
      credential_profile_name: test-fb

AWS Credentials Types

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There are two different types of AWS credentials can be used: access keys and temporary security credentials.

  • Access keys

AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID and AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY are the two parts of access keys. They are long-term credentials for an IAM user or the AWS account root user. Please see AWS Access Keys and Secret Access Keys for more details.

  • IAM role ARN

An IAM role is an IAM identity that you can create in your account that has specific permissions that determine what the identity can and cannot do in AWS. A role does not have standard long-term credentials such as a password or access keys associated with it. Instead, when you assume a role, it provides you with temporary security credentials for your role session. IAM role Amazon Resource Name (ARN) can be used to specify which AWS IAM role to assume to generate temporary credentials. Please see AssumeRole API documentation for more details.

Here are the steps to set up IAM role using AWS CLI for Metricbeat. Please replace 123456789012 with your own account ID.

Step 1. Create example-policy.json file to include all permissions:

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "VisualEditor0",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "s3:GetObject",
                "sqs:ReceiveMessage"
            ],
            "Resource": "*"
        },
        {
            "Sid": "VisualEditor1",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": "sqs:ChangeMessageVisibility",
            "Resource": "arn:aws:sqs:us-east-1:123456789012:test-fb-ks"
        },
        {
            "Sid": "VisualEditor2",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": "sqs:DeleteMessage",
            "Resource": "arn:aws:sqs:us-east-1:123456789012:test-fb-ks"
        },
        {
            "Sid": "VisualEditor3",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "sts:AssumeRole",
                "sqs:ListQueues",
                "tag:GetResources",
                "ec2:DescribeInstances",
                "cloudwatch:GetMetricData",
                "ec2:DescribeRegions",
                "iam:ListAccountAliases",
                "sts:GetCallerIdentity",
                "cloudwatch:ListMetrics"
            ],
            "Resource": "*"
        }
    ]
}

Step 2. Create IAM policy using the aws iam create-policy command:

$ aws iam create-policy --policy-name example-policy --policy-document file://example-policy.json

Step 3. Create the JSON file example-role-trust-policy.json that defines the trust relationship of the IAM role

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": {
        "Effect": "Allow",
        "Principal": { "AWS": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:root" },
        "Action": "sts:AssumeRole"
    }
}

Step 4. Create the IAM role and attach the policy:

$ aws iam create-role --role-name example-role --assume-role-policy-document file://example-role-trust-policy.json
$ aws iam attach-role-policy --role-name example-role --policy-arn "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:policy/example-policy"

After these steps are done, IAM role ARN can be used for authentication in Metricbeat aws module.

  • Temporary security credentials

Temporary security credentials has a limited lifetime and consists of an access key ID, a secret access key, and a security token which typically returned from GetSessionToken. MFA-enabled IAM users would need to submit an MFA code while calling GetSessionToken. Please see Temporary Security Credentials for more details. sts get-session-token AWS CLI can be used to generate temporary credentials. For example. with MFA-enabled:

aws> sts get-session-token --serial-number arn:aws:iam::1234:mfa/your-email@example.com --token-code 456789 --duration-seconds 129600

Because temporary security credentials are short term, after they expire, the user needs to generate new ones and modify the aws.yml config file with the new credentials. Unless live reloading feature is enabled for Metricbeat, the user needs to manually restart Metricbeat after updating the config file in order to continue collecting Cloudwatch metrics. This will cause data loss if the config file is not updated with new credentials before the old ones expire. For Metricbeat, we recommend users to use access keys in config file to enable aws module making AWS api calls without have to generate new temporary credentials and update the config frequently.

IAM policy is an entity that defines permissions to an object within your AWS environment. Specific permissions needs to be added into the IAM user’s policy to authorize Metricbeat to collect AWS monitoring metrics. Please see documentation under each metricset for required permissions.