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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Elastic network drive connector reference

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Elastic network drive connector reference

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The Elastic network drive connector is a connector for network drive data sources.

Availability and prerequisites

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This connector is available as a native connector on Elastic Cloud, as of 8.9.1.

This connector is available as a self-managed connector client using the Elastic connector framework.

This connector client is compatible with Elastic versions 8.6.0+.

To use this connector, satisfy all connector client requirements.

Usage

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To use this connector as a native connector, see Native connectors (managed service).

To use this connector as a connector client, see Connector clients.

Configuration

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When using the connector client workflow, initially these fields will use the default configuration set in the connector source code. These are set in the get_default_configuration function definition.

These configurable fields will be rendered with their respective labels in the Kibana UI. Once connected, you’ll be able to update these values in Kibana.

The following configuration fields are required to set up the connector:

username

The username of the account for the network drive. The user must have at least read permissions for the folder path provided.

password

The password of the account to be used for crawling the network drive.

server_ip

The server IP address where the network drive is hosted. Default value is 127.0.0.1.

server_port

The server port where the network drive service is available. Default value is 445.

drive_path

The network drive path the connector will crawl to fetch files. This is the name of the folder shared via SMB. The connector uses the Python smbprotocol library which supports both SMB v2 and v3.
Accepts only one path— parent folders can be specified to widen the scope.
The drive path should use forward slashes as path separators. Example:
- admin/bin

Deployment using Docker

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You can deploy the Network drive connector as a self-managed connector client using Docker. Follow these instructions.

Step 1: Download sample configuration file

Download the sample configuration file. You can either download it manually or run the following command:

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/elastic/connectors/main/config.yml.example --output ~/connectors-config/config.yml

Remember to update the --output argument value if your directory name is different, or you want to use a different config file name.

Step 2: Update the configuration file for your self-managed connector

Update the configuration file with the following settings to match your environment:

elasticsearch.host
elasticsearch.api_key
connectors

If you’re running the connector service against a Dockerized version of Elasticsearch and Kibana, your config file will look like this:

# When connecting to your cloud deployment you should edit the host value
elasticsearch.host: http://host.docker.internal:9200
elasticsearch.api_key: <ELASTICSEARCH_API_KEY>

connectors:
  -
    connector_id: <CONNECTOR_ID_FROM_KIBANA>
    service_type: network_drive
    api_key: <CONNECTOR_API_KEY_FROM_KIBANA>

Using the elasticsearch.api_key is the recommended authentication method. However, you can also use elasticsearch.username and elasticsearch.password to authenticate with your Elasticsearch instance.

Note: You can change other default configurations by simply uncommenting specific settings in the configuration file and modifying their values.

Step 3: Run the Docker image

Run the Docker image with the Connector Service using the following command:

docker run \
-v ~/connectors-config:/config \
--network "elastic" \
--tty \
--rm \
docker.elastic.co/enterprise-search/elastic-connectors:8.10.4.0 \
/app/bin/elastic-ingest \
-c /config/config.yml

Refer to DOCKER.md in the elastic/connectors repo for more details.

Find all available Docker images in the official registry.

Documents and syncs

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The connector syncs folders as separate documents in Elasticsearch. The following fields will be added for the document type folder:

create_time
title
path
modified
time
id

Files bigger than 10 MB won’t be extracted.
Permission are not synced. All documents indexed to an Elastic deployment will be visible to all users with access to that Elastic Deployment.

Sync rules

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Basic sync rules are identical for all connectors and are available by default.

Advanced sync rules

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A full sync is required for advanced sync rules to take effect.

Advanced sync rules are defined through a source-specific DSL JSON snippet. Advanced sync rules for this connector use glob patterns.

Each rule must contains a glob pattern. This pattern is then matched against all the available folder paths inside the configured drive path.
The pattern must begin with the drive_path field configured in the connector.
If the pattern matches any available folder paths, the contents directly within those folders will be fetched.

The following sections provide examples of advanced sync rules for this connector.

Indexing files and folders recursively within folders

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[
  {
    "pattern": "Folder-shared/a/mock/**"
  },
  {
    "pattern": "Folder-shared/b/alpha/**"
  }
]

Indexing files and folders directly inside folder

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[
  {
    "pattern": "Folder-shared/a/b/test"
  }
]

Indexing files and folders directly inside a set of folders

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[
  {
    "pattern": "Folder-shared/org/*/all-tests/test[135]"
  }
]

Excluding files and folders that match a pattern

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[
  {
    "pattern": "Folder-shared/**/all-tests/test[!7]"
  }
]

Content extraction

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See Content extraction.

End-to-end tests

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The connector framework enables operators to run functional tests against a real data source. Refer to Connector testing for more details.

To execute a functional test for the Network Drive connector client, run the following command:

$ make ftest NAME=network_drive

By default, this will use a medium-sized dataset. For faster tests add the DATA_SIZE=small flag:

make ftest NAME=network_drive DATA_SIZE=small

Known issues

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Network Drive Connector may fail to connect to some shares

In versions prior to 8.15.3, the Network Drive Connector used an older version of the smbprotocol Python library. This version could incorrectly determine protocol parameters if the requesting host met specific edge case criteria.

You can read more about this bug here: https://github.com/jborean93/smbprotocol/issues/199

If your Network Drive Connector is failing to connect to your share, consider updating to versions >= 8.15.3.

See Known issues for any issues affecting all connectors.

This connector is included in the Elastic connector framework.

View the source code for this connector (branch 8.10, compatible with Elastic 8.10).

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Elastic network drive connector reference

Elastic network drive connector reference

Availability and prerequisites

Usage

Configuration

Deployment using Docker

Documents and syncs

Sync rules

Advanced sync rules

Indexing files and folders recursively within folders

Indexing files and folders directly inside folder

Indexing files and folders directly inside a set of folders

Excluding files and folders that match a pattern

Content extraction

End-to-end tests

Known issues

Troubleshooting

Security

Framework and source