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Elastic Docs ›Winlogbeat Reference [5.1] ›Configuring Winlogbeat ›Configuration Options (Reference)

Logstash Output Configuration

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Logstash Output Configuration

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The Logstash output sends the events directly to Logstash by using the lumberjack protocol, which runs over TCP. To use this option, you must install and configure the Beats input plugin for Logstash. Logstash allows for additional processing and routing of generated events.

Every event sent to Logstash contains additional metadata for indexing and filtering:

{
    ...
    "@metadata": {
      "beat": "<beat>",
      "type": "<event type>"
    }
}

In Logstash, you can configure the Elasticsearch output plugin to use the metadata and event type for indexing.

The following Logstash configuration file for the versions 2.x and 5.x sets Logstash to use the index and document type reported by Beats for indexing events into Elasticsearch. The index used will depend on the @timestamp field as identified by Logstash.

input {
  beats {
    port => 5044
  }
}

output {
  elasticsearch {
    hosts => ["http://localhost:9200"]
    index => "%{[@metadata][beat]}-%{+YYYY.MM.dd}"
    document_type => "%{[@metadata][type]}"
  }
}

Events indexed into Elasticsearch with the Logstash configuration shown here will be similar to events directly indexed by Beats into Elasticsearch.

Here is an example of how to configure the Beat to use Logstash:

output.logstash:
  hosts: ["localhost:5044"]
  index: winlogbeat

Compatibility

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This output works with all compatible versions of Logstash. See "Supported Beats Versions" in the Elastic Support Matrix.

Logstash Output Options

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You can specify the following options in the logstash section of the winlogbeat.yml config file:

enabled

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The enabled config is a boolean setting to enable or disable the output. If set to false, the output is disabled.

The default value is true.

hosts

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The list of known Logstash servers to connect to. All entries in this list can contain a port number. If no port number is given, the value specified for port is used as the default port number.

compression_level

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The gzip compression level. Setting this value to 0 disables compression. The compression level must be in the range of 1 (best speed) to 9 (best compression).

Increasing the compression level will reduce the network usage but will increase the cpu usage.

The default value is 3.

worker

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The number of workers per configured host publishing events to Logstash. This is best used with load balancing mode enabled. Example: If you have 2 hosts and 3 workers, in total 6 workers are started (3 for each host).

loadbalance

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If set to true and multiple Logstash hosts are configured, the output plugin load balances published events onto all Logstash hosts. If set to false, the output plugin sends all events to only one host (determined at random) and will switch to another host if the selected one becomes unresponsive. The default value is false.

output.logstash:
  hosts: ["localhost:5044", "localhost:5045"]
  loadbalance: true
  index: winlogbeat

pipelining

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Configures number of batches to be send asynchronously to logstash while waiting for ACK from logstash. Output only becomes blocking once number of pipelining batches have been written. Pipelining is disabled if a values of 0 is configured. The default value is 0.

port

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Deprecated in 5.0.0.

The default port to use if the port number is not given in hosts. The default port number is 10200.

proxy_url

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The URL of the SOCKS5 proxy to use when connecting to the Logstash servers. The value must be a URL with a scheme of socks5://. The protocol used to communicate to Logstash is not based on HTTP so a web-proxy cannot be used.

If the SOCKS5 proxy server requires client authentication, then a username and password can be embedded in the URL as shown in the example.

When using a proxy, hostnames are resolved on the proxy server instead of on the client. You can change this behavior by setting the proxy_use_local_resolver option.

output.logstash:
  hosts: ["remote-host:5044"]
  proxy_url: socks5://user:password@socks5-proxy:2233

proxy_use_local_resolver

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The proxy_use_local_resolver option determines if Logstash hostnames are resolved locally when using a proxy. The default value is false which means that when a proxy is used the name resolution occurs on the proxy server.

index

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The index root name to write events to. The default is the Beat name. For example "winlogbeat" generates "[winlogbeat-]YYYY.MM.DD" indexes (for example, "winlogbeat-2015.04.26").

ssl

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Configuration options for SSL parameters like the root CA for Logstash connections. See SSL Configuration for more information. To use SSL, you must also configure the Beats input plugin for Logstash to use SSL/TLS.

timeout

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The number of seconds to wait for responses from the Logstash server before timing out. The default is 30 (seconds).

max_retries

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The number of times to retry publishing an event after a publishing failure. After the specified number of retries, the events are typically dropped. Some Beats, such as Filebeat, ignore the max_retries setting and retry until all events are published.

Set max_retries to a value less than 0 to retry until all events are published.

The default is 3.

bulk_max_size

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The maximum number of events to bulk in a single Logstash request. The default is 2048.

If the Beat sends single events, the events are collected into batches. If the Beat publishes a large batch of events (larger than the value specified by bulk_max_size), the batch is split.

Specifying a larger batch size can improve performance by lowering the overhead of sending events. However big batch sizes can also increase processing times, which might result in API errors, killed connections, timed-out publishing requests, and, ultimately, lower throughput.

Setting bulk_max_size to values less than or equal to 0 disables buffering in libbeat. When buffering is disabled, Beats that publish single events (such as Packetbeat) send each event directly to Elasticsearch. Beats that publish data in batches (such as Filebeat) send events in batches based on the spooler size.

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