ETW input
editETW input
editThis 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.
Event Tracing for Windows is a powerful logging and tracing mechanism built into the Windows operating system. It provides a detailed view of application and system behavior, performance issues, and runtime diagnostics. Trace events contain an event header and provider-defined data that describes the current state of an application or operation. You can use the events to debug an application and perform capacity and performance analysis.
The ETW input can interact with ETW in three distinct ways: it can create a new session to capture events from user-mode providers, attach to an already existing session to collect ongoing event data, or read events from a pre-recorded .etl file. This functionality enables the module to adapt to different scenarios, such as real-time event monitoring or analyzing historical data.
This input currently supports manifest-based, MOF (classic) and TraceLogging providers while WPP providers are not supported. Here you can find more information about the available types of providers.
It has been tested in the Windows versions supported by Filebeat, starting from Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016. In addition, administrative privileges are required to control event tracing sessions.
Example configurations:
Read from a provider by name:
filebeat.inputs: - type: etw id: etw-dnsserver enabled: true provider.name: Microsoft-Windows-DNSServer session_name: DNSServer-Analytical trace_level: verbose match_any_keyword: 0x8000000000000000 match_all_keyword: 0
Read from a provider by its GUID:
filebeat.inputs:
- type: etw
id: etw-dnsserver
enabled: true
provider.guid: {EB79061A-A566-4698-9119-3ED2807060E7}
session_name: DNSServer-Analytical
trace_level: verbose
match_any_keyword: 0x8000000000000000
match_all_keyword: 0
Read from an existing session:
filebeat.inputs: - type: etw enabled: true id: etw-dnsserver-session session: UAL_Usermode_Provider
Read from a .etl file:
filebeat.inputs: - type: etw enabled: true id: etw-dnsserver-session file: "C\Windows\System32\Winevt\Logs\Logfile.etl"
Examples shown above are mutually exclusive, the options
provider.name, provider.guid, session and file cannot be present at the
same time. Nevertheless, it is a requirement that one of them is present.
Multiple providers example:
filebeat.inputs: - type: etw id: etw-dnsserver enabled: true provider.name: Microsoft-Windows-DNSServer session_name: DNSServer-Analytical trace_level: verbose match_any_keyword: 0xffffffffffffffff match_all_keyword: 0 - type: etw id: etw-security enabled: true provider.name: Microsoft-Windows-Security-Auditing session_name: Security-Auditing trace_level: warning match_any_keyword: 0xfffffffffffffff match_all_keyword: 0
Configuration options
editThe etw input supports the following configuration options plus the
Common options described later.
file
editSpecifies the path to an .etl file for reading ETW events. This file format is commonly used for storing ETW event logs.
provider.guid
editIdentifies the GUID of an ETW provider. To see available providers, use the
command logman query providers.
provider.name
editSpecifies the name of the ETW provider. Available providers can be listed using
logman query providers.
session_name
editWhen specifying a provider, a new session is created. This controls the name for the new ETW session it will create. If not specified, the session will be named using the provider ID prefixed by Elastic-.
trace_level
editDefines the filtering level for events based on severity. Valid options include critical, error, warning, information, and verbose.
match_any_keyword
editAn 8-byte bitmask used for filtering events from specific provider subcomponents
based on keyword matching. Any matching keyword will enable the event to be
written. Default value is 0xffffffffffffffff so it matches every available
keyword.
Run logman query providers "<provider.name>" to list the available keywords
for a specific provider.
match_all_keyword
editSimilar to MatchAnyKeyword, this 8-byte bitmask filters events that match all
specified keyword bits. Default value is 0 to let every event pass.
Run logman query providers "<provider.name>" to list the available keywords
for a specific provider.
session
editNames an existing ETW session to read from. Existing sessions can be listed
using logman query -ets.
Common options
editThe following configuration options are supported by all inputs.
enabled
editUse the enabled option to enable and disable inputs. By default, enabled is
set to true.
tags
editA list of tags that Filebeat includes in the tags field of each published
event. Tags make it easy to select specific events in Kibana or apply
conditional filtering in Logstash. These tags will be appended to the list of
tags specified in the general configuration.
Example:
filebeat.inputs: - type: etw . . . tags: ["json"]
fields
editOptional fields that you can specify to add additional information to the
output. For example, you might add fields that you can use for filtering log
data. Fields can be scalar values, arrays, dictionaries, or any nested
combination of these. By default, the fields that you specify here will be
grouped under a fields sub-dictionary in the output document. To store the
custom fields as top-level fields, set the fields_under_root option to true.
If a duplicate field is declared in the general configuration, then its value
will be overwritten by the value declared here.
filebeat.inputs:
- type: etw
. . .
fields:
app_id: query_engine_12
fields_under_root
editIf this option is set to true, the custom
fields are stored as top-level fields in
the output document instead of being grouped under a fields sub-dictionary. If
the custom field names conflict with other field names added by Filebeat,
then the custom fields overwrite the other fields.
processors
editA list of processors to apply to the input data.
See Processors for information about specifying processors in your config.
pipeline
editThe ingest pipeline ID to set for the events generated by this input.
The pipeline ID can also be configured in the Elasticsearch output, but this option usually results in simpler configuration files. If the pipeline is configured both in the input and output, the option from the input is used.
keep_null
editIf this option is set to true, fields with null values will be published in
the output document. By default, keep_null is set to false.
index
editIf present, this formatted string overrides the index for events from this input
(for elasticsearch outputs), or sets the raw_index field of the event’s
metadata (for other outputs). This string can only refer to the agent name and
version and the event timestamp; for access to dynamic fields, use
output.elasticsearch.index or a processor.
Example value: "%{[agent.name]}-myindex-%{+yyyy.MM.dd}" might
expand to "filebeat-myindex-2019.11.01".
publisher_pipeline.disable_host
editBy default, all events contain host.name. This option can be set to true to
disable the addition of this field to all events. The default value is false.
Metrics
editThis input exposes metrics under the HTTP monitoring endpoint.
These metrics are exposed under the /inputs/ path. They can be used to
observe the activity of the input.
You must assign a unique id to the input to expose metrics.
| Metric | Description |
|---|---|
|
Name of the ETW session. |
|
Total number of events received. |
|
Total number of discarded events. |
|
Total number of errors. |
|
Histogram of the difference between timestamped event’s creation and reading. |
|
Histogram of the elapsed time between event notification callbacks. |
|
Histogram of the elapsed time between event notification callback and publication to the internal queue. |
Histogram metrics are aggregated over the previous 1024 events.