Step 2: Configuring Topbeat

To configure Topbeat, you edit the configuration file. For rpm and deb, you’ll find the configuration file at /etc/topbeat/topbeat.yml. For mac and win, look in the archive that you just extracted.

Here is a sample of the topbeat.yml file. Topbeat uses predefined default values for most configuration options.

input:
  period: 10
  procs: [".*"]

To configure Topbeat:

Set the following options to specify how often Topbeat reads statistics and specify which processes it monitors:
- The period option defines how often to read system-wide and per-process statistics from your servers. The interval is in seconds. By default, it’s set to 10 seconds.
- The procs option defines a list of regular expressions to match all the processes that need to be monitored. By default, all the running processes are monitored.
  
  If you are not interested in collecting per-process statistics, you can use:
```
input:
  stats:
    process: false
```

If you are sending output to Elasticsearch, set the IP address and port where Topbeat can find the Elasticsearch installation:

# Configure what outputs to use when sending the data collected by the beat.
# Multiple outputs may be used.
output:
  ### Elasticsearch as output
  elasticsearch:
    # Array of hosts to connect to.
     hosts: ["192.168.1.42:9200"]

If you are sending output to Logstash, see Configuring Topbeat to Use Logstash instead.

To test your configuration file, run Topbeat in the foreground with the following options specified: ./topbeat -configtest -e.

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