Specify which modules to run

Metricbeat provides a couple different ways to enable modules and metricsets:

The modules.d directory contains default configurations for all the modules available in Metricbeat. You can enable or disable specific module configurations under modules.d by running the modules enable or modules disable commands.

For example, to enable the apache and mysql configs in the modules.d directory, you use:

./metricbeat modules enable apache mysql

Then when you run Metricbeat, it loads the corresponding module configurations specified in the modules.d directory (for example, modules.d/apache.yml and modules.d/mysql.yml).

To see a list of enabled and disabled modules, run:

./metricbeat modules list

You can change the default module configurations by modifying the .yml files in the modules.d directory.

The following example shows a basic configuration for the Apache module:

- module: apache
  metricsets: ["status"]
  hosts: ["http://127.0.0.1/"]
  period: 10s
  fields:
    dc: west
  tags: ["tag"]
  processors:
  ....

See Configuration combinations for additional configuration examples.

When possible, you should use the config files in the modules.d directory.

However, enabling modules directly in the config file is a practical approach if you have upgraded from a previous version of Metricbeat and don’t want to move your module configs to the modules.d directory. You can continue to configure modules in the metricbeat.yml file, but you won’t be able to use the modules command to enable and disable configurations because the command requires the modules.d layout.

To enable specific modules and metricsets in the metricbeat.yml config file, you can add entries to the metricbeat.modules list. Each entry in the list begins with a dash (-) and is followed by settings for that module.

The following example shows a configuration where the apache and mysql modules are enabled:

metricbeat.modules:

#---------------------------- Apache Status Module ---------------------------
- module: apache
  metricsets: ["status"]
  period: 1s
  hosts: ["http://127.0.0.1/"]

#---------------------------- MySQL Status Module ----------------------------
- module: mysql
  metricsets: ["status"]
  period: 2s
  hosts: ["root@tcp(127.0.0.1:3306)/"]

In the following example, the Redis host is crawled for stats information every second because this is critical data, but the full list of Apache metricsets is only fetched every 30 seconds because the metrics are less critical.

metricbeat.modules:
- module: redis
  metricsets: ["info"]
  hosts: ["host1"]
  period: 1s
- module: apache
  metricsets: ["info"]
  hosts: ["host1"]
  period: 30s

You can specify a module configuration that uses different combinations of metricsets, periods, and hosts.

For a module with multiple metricsets defined, it’s possible to define the module twice and specify a different period to use for each metricset. For the following example, the set1 metricset will be fetched every 10 seconds, while the set2 metricset will be fetched every 2 minutes:

- module: example
  metricsets: ["set1"]
  hosts: ["host1"]
  period: 10s
- module: example
  metricsets: ["set2"]
  hosts: ["host1"]
  period: 2m

You can specify the following options for any Metricbeat module. Some modules require additional configuration settings. See the Modules section for more information.

The name of the module to run. For documentation about each module, see the Modules section.

A list of metricsets to execute. Make sure that you only list metricsets that are available in the module. It is not possible to reference metricsets from other modules. For a list of available metricsets, see the documentation for the module.

A Boolean value that specifies whether the module is enabled. If you use the default config file, metricbeat.yml, the System module is enabled (set to enabled: true) by default. If the enabled option is missing from the configuration block, the module is enabled by default.

How often the metricsets are executed. If a system is not reachable, Metricbeat returns an error for each period. This setting is required.

A list of hosts to fetch information from. For some metricsets, such as the System module, this setting is optional.

A dictionary of fields that will be sent with the metricset event. This setting is optional.

A list of tags that will be sent with the metricset event. This setting is optional.

A list of processors to apply to the data generated by the metricset.

See Filter and enhance the exported data for information about specifying processors in your config.