IMPORTANT: No additional bug fixes or documentation updates will be released for this version. For the latest information, see the current release documentation.

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SSL/TLS communication

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SSL/TLS communication

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This documentation refers to configuring the standalone (legacy) APM Server. This method of running APM Server will be deprecated and removed in a future release. Please consider upgrading to Fleet and the APM integration. If you’ve already upgraded, see APM agent TLS communication.

SSL/TLS is disabled by default. Besides enabling it, you need to provide a certificate and a corresponding private key as well.

The following is a basic APM Server SSL config with secure communication enabled. This will make APM Server serve HTTPS requests instead of HTTP.

apm-server.ssl.enabled: true
apm-server.ssl.certificate: "/path/to/apm-server.crt"
apm-server.ssl.key: "/path/to/apm-server.key"

A full list of configuration options is available in SSL input settings.

Certificate and private key can be issued by a trusted certificate authority (CA) or self-signed.

When using a self-signed (or custom CA) certificate, communication from APM Agents will require additional settings due to Server certificate authentication

Creating a self-signed certificate

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The Elasticsearch distribution offers the certutil tool for the creation of self-signed certificates:

Create a CA: ./bin/elasticsearch-certutil ca --pem. You’ll be prompted to enter the desired location of the output zip archive containing the certificate and the private key.
Extract the contents of the CA archive.
Create the self-signed certificate: ./bin/elasticsearch-certutil cert --ca-cert <path-to-ca-crt>/ca.crt --ca-key <path-to-ca-key>/ca.key --pem --name localhost
Extract the certificate and key from the resulted zip archive.

Server certificate authentication

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By default, when SSL is enabled for APM Server inbound communication, agents will verify the identity of the APM Server by authenticating its certificate.

When the APM server uses a certificate that is not chained to a publicly-trusted certificate (e.g. self-signed), additional setting will be required on the agent side:

Go agent: certificate pinning through ELASTIC_APM_SERVER_CERT
Python agent: certificate pinning through server_cert
Ruby agent: certificate pinning through server_ca_cert
.NET agent: ServerCert
Node.js agent: custom CA setting through serverCaCertFile
Java agent: adding the certificate to the JVM trustStore. See APM Server authentication for more details.

It is not recommended to disable APM Server authentication, however it is possible through agents configuration:

Go agent: ELASTIC_APM_VERIFY_SERVER_CERT
.NET agent: VerifyServerCert
Java agent: verify_server_cert
PHP agent: verify_server_cert
Python agent: verify_server_cert
Ruby agent: verify_server_cert
Node.js agent: verifyServerCert

Client certificate authentication

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By default, the APM Server does not require agents to provide a certificate for authentication. This can be changed through the ssl.client_authentication configuration.

There is no dedicated support for SSL/TLS client certificate authentication in Elastic’s backend agents, so setting it up may require some additional effort. For example - see Java Agent authentication.

If agents are authenticating themselves using a certificate that cannot be authenticated through known CAs (e.g. self signed certificates), use the ssl.certificate_authorities to set a custom CA. This will automatically modify the ssl.client_authentication configuration to require authentication.

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