Step 2: Configure Heartbeat
editStep 2: Configure Heartbeat
editTo configure Heartbeat, you edit the configuration file. The default
configuration file is called heartbeat.yml
. The location of the file
varies by platform. To locate the file, see Directory layout.
There’s also a full example configuration file called heartbeat.reference.yml
that shows all non-deprecated options.
See the Config File Format section of the Beats Platform Reference for more about the structure of the config file.
Heartbeat provides monitors to check the status of hosts at set intervals.
You configure each monitor individually. Heartbeat currently provides monitors
for ICMP, TCP, and HTTP (see Overview for more about these
monitors). Here is an example that configures Heartbeat to use an icmp
monitor:
heartbeat.monitors: - type: icmp schedule: '*/5 * * * * * *' hosts: ["myhost"] output.elasticsearch: hosts: ["myEShost:9200"]
To configure Heartbeat:
-
Specify the list of monitors that you want to enable. Each item in the list begins with a dash (-). The following example configures Heartbeat to use two monitors, an
icmp
monitor and atcp
monitor:heartbeat.monitors: - type: icmp schedule: '*/5 * * * * * *' hosts: ["myhost"] - type: tcp schedule: '@every 5s' hosts: ["myhost:12345"] mode: any
The
icmp
monitor is scheduled to run exactly every 5 seconds (10:00:00, 10:00:05, and so on). Theschedule
option uses a cron-like syntax based on thiscronexpr
implementation.The
tcp
monitor is set to run every 5 seconds from the time when Heartbeat was started. Heartbeat adds the@every
keyword to the syntax provided by thecronexpr
package.The
mode
specifies whether to ping one IP (any
) or all resolvable IPs (all
).See Configuring Heartbeat for a full description of each configuration option.
-
Configure the output. Heartbeat supports a variety of outputs, but typically you’ll either send events directly to Elasticsearch, or to Logstash for additional processing.
To send output directly to Elasticsearch (without using Logstash), set the location of the Elasticsearch installation:
-
If you’re running our hosted Elasticsearch Service on Elastic Cloud, specify your Cloud ID. For example:
cloud.id: "staging:dXMtZWFzdC0xLmF3cy5mb3VuZC5pbyRjZWM2ZjI2MWE3NGJmMjRjZTMzYmI4ODExYjg0Mjk0ZiRjNmMyY2E2ZDA0MjI0OWFmMGNjN2Q3YTllOTYyNTc0Mw=="
-
If you’re running Elasticsearch on your own hardware, set the host and port where Heartbeat can find the Elasticsearch installation. For example:
output.elasticsearch: hosts: ["myEShost:9200"]
To send output to Logstash, Configure the Logstash output instead. For all other outputs, see Configure the output.
-
-
If you plan to use the sample Kibana dashboards provided with Heartbeat, configure the Kibana endpoint. You can skip this step if Kibana is running on the same host as Elasticsearch.
-
If Elasticsearch and Kibana are secured, set credentials in the
heartbeat.yml
config file before you run the commands that set up and start Heartbeat.-
If you’re running our hosted Elasticsearch Service on Elastic Cloud, specify your cloud auth credentials. For example:
cloud.auth: "elastic:YOUR_PASSWORD"
-
If you’re running Elasticsearch on your own hardware, specify your Elasticsearch and Kibana credentials:
output.elasticsearch: hosts: ["myEShost:9200"] username: "filebeat_internal" password: "YOUR_PASSWORD" setup.kibana: host: "mykibanahost:5601" username: "my_kibana_user" password: "YOUR_PASSWORD"
This examples shows a hard-coded password, but you should store sensitive values in the secrets keystore.
The
username
andpassword
settings for Kibana are optional. If you don’t specify credentials for Kibana, Heartbeat uses theusername
andpassword
specified for the Elasticsearch output.To use the pre-built Kibana dashboards, this user must have the
kibana_user
built-in role or equivalent privileges.For more information, see Securing Heartbeat.
-
To test your configuration file, change to the directory where the
Heartbeat binary is installed, and run Heartbeat in the foreground with
the following options specified: ./heartbeat test config -e
. Make sure your
config files are in the path expected by Heartbeat (see Directory layout),
or use the -c
flag to specify the path to the config file.
Before starting Heartbeat, you should look at the configuration options in the configuration file. For more information about these options, see Configuring Heartbeat.