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Configuration settings

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Configuration settings

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This functionality is in beta and is subject to change. The design and code is less mature than official GA features and is being provided as-is with no warranties. Beta features are not subject to the support SLA of official GA features.

By default Elastic Agent runs in standalone mode to ingest system data and send it to a local Elasticsearch instance running on port 9200. It uses the demo credentials of the elastic user. It’s also configured to monitor all programs managed by Elastic Agent and send the logs and metrics to the same Elasticsearch instance.

To alter this behavior, configure the output and other configuration settings. When running the agent standalone, specify configuration settings in the elastic-agent.yml file. When using Fleet, do not modify settings in the elastic-agent.yml file. Instead, use Ingest Manager in Kibana to change settings.

To get started quickly, you can use Fleet to generate a standalone configuration. For more information, see Standalone mode (manual configuration).

Output settings

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Specify one or more outputs. Specifying multiple outputs allows you to pair each data source with a different output.

Elastic Agent currently works with the Elasticsearch output only.

Example output configuration:

outputs:
  default:
    type: elasticsearch
    hosts: [127.0.0.1:9200]
    username: elastic
    password: changeme

  monitoring:
    type: elasticsearch
    api_key: VuaCfGcBCdbkQm-e5aOx:ui2lp2axTNmsyakw9tvNnw
    hosts: ["localhost:9200"]
    ca_sha256: "7lHLiyp4J8m9kw38SJ7SURJP4bXRZv/BNxyyXkCcE/M="

This example configures two outputs: default and monitoring. Notice that they use different authentication methods. The first one uses a username and password pair, and the second one contains an API key.

A default output configuration is required.

Beats monitoring settings

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Elastic Agent monitors Beats by default. To disable or change monitoring settings, set options under agent.monitoring:

agent.monitoring:
  # enabled turns on monitoring of running processes
  enabled: true
  # enables log monitoring
  logs: true
  # enables metrics monitoring
  metrics: true
  # specifies output to be used
  use_output: monitoring

To disable monitoring, set agent.monitoring.enabled to false. When set to false, Beats monitoring is turned off, and all other options in this section are ignored.

To enable monitoring, set agent.monitoring.enabled to true. Also set the logs and metrics settings to control whether logs, metrics, or both are collected. If neither setting is specified, monitoring is disabled. Set use_output to specify the output to which monitoring events are sent.

Input settings

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By default Elastic Agent collects system metrics, such as cpu, memory, network, and filesystem metrics, and sends them to the default output. For example:

inputs:
  - type: system/metrics
    data_stream.namespace: default
    use_output: default
    streams:
      - metricset: cpu
        data_stream.dataset: system.cpu
      - metricset: memory
        data_stream.dataset: system.memory
      - metricset: network
        data_stream.dataset: system.network
      - metricset: filesystem
        data_stream.dataset: system.filesystem

If use_output is not specified, the default output is used.

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