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Elastic Docs ›Metricbeat Reference [6.4] ›Securing Metricbeat ›Configure Metricbeat to use X-Pack security

Configure authentication credentials

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Configure authentication credentials

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When sending data to a secured cluster through the elasticsearch output, Metricbeat must either provide basic authentication credentials or present a client certificate.

To configure authentication credentials for Metricbeat:

  1. Create a writer role that has the following privileges:

    • Cluster: manage_index_templates and monitor
    • Index: write and create_index on the Metricbeat indices

    You can create roles from the Management / Roles UI in Kibana or through the role API. For example, the following request creates a role named metricbeat_writer:

    POST _xpack/security/role/metricbeat_writer
{
  "cluster": ["manage_index_templates","monitor"],
  "indices": [
    {
      "names": [ "metricbeat-*" ], 
      "privileges": ["write","create_index"]
    }
  ]
}

    If you use a custom Metricbeat index pattern, specify that pattern instead of the default metricbeat-* pattern.

  2. Assign the writer role to the user that Metricbeat will use to connect to Elasticsearch. If you plan to load the pre-built Kibana dashboards, also assign the kibana_user role. If you plan to load machine learning jobs, assign the machine_learning_admin role.

    1. To authenticate as a native user, create a user for Metricbeat to use internally and assign it the writer role, plus any other roles that are needed.

      You can create users from the Management / Users UI in Kibana or through the user API. For example, following request creates a user named metricbeat_internal that has the metricbeat_writer and kibana_user roles:

      POST /_xpack/security/user/metricbeat_internal
{
  "password" : "YOUR_PASSWORD",
  "roles" : [ "metricbeat_writer","kibana_user"],
  "full_name" : "Internal Metricbeat User"
}
      Copy as curlTry in Elastic 

    2. To use PKI authentication, assign the writer role, plus any other roles that are needed, in the role_mapping.yml configuration file. Specify the user by the distinguished name that appears in its certificate:

      metricbeat_writer:
  - "cn=Internal Metricbeat User,ou=example,o=com"
kibana_user:
  - "cn=Internal Metricbeat User,ou=example,o=com"

      For more information, see Using Role Mapping Files.

  3. In the Metricbeat configuration file, specify authentication credentials for the elasticsearch output:

    1. To use basic authentication, configure the username and password settings. For example, the following Metricbeat output configuration uses the native metricbeat_internal user to connect to Elasticsearch:

      output.elasticsearch:
  hosts: ["localhost:9200"]
  username: "metricbeat_internal" 
  password: "YOUR_PASSWORD"

      You created this user earlier.

      The example shows a hard-coded password, but you should store sensitive values in the secrets keystore.

    2. To use PKI authentication, configure the certificate and key settings:

      output.elasticsearch:
  hosts: ["localhost:9200"]
  ssl.certificate: "/etc/pki/client/cert.pem" 
  ssl.key: "/etc/pki/client/cert.key"

      The distinguished name (DN) in the certificate must be mapped to the metricbeat_writer and kibana_user roles in the role_mapping.yml configuration file on each node in the Elasticsearch cluster.
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