Manage users and roles in X-Pack

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For version 5.0 and later: You work with users and roles in the Kibana Management app.

The Users tab shows the users that have been defined on your cluster. You can add or delete users here and assign roles that give users specific privileges. A user can hold several roles.

The <code class=admin user in X-Pack">

If you upgraded a cluster to Elasticsearch 5.0 or later from a version before 5.0, the users defined in your Shield were also migrated to X-Pack and show up in this list. You can work with these users after they have been migrated like any other user in the Kibana Management app.

The Roles tab shows the roles that exist on your cluster. Roles let you customize exactly which actions a user with the role can do, both on a cluster and an index level. Several users can have the same role. You can also add or delete users

The <code class=admin role in X-Pack">

One user is always created with new version 5.0 clusters:

elastic
A superuser that is somewhat similar in scope to the default admin user in Shield configurations on Elastic Cloud Enterprise before version 5.0. The elastic user is not shown in the Kibana Management app and you cannot modify this user, other than to reset the password.

To learn more about users and roles, see User authentication.

Example: Create a Filebeat role and user

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To send Beats data to a secured cluster in Elastic Cloud Enterprise, you should use a user that has the right privileges. In this example, we create a user filebeat_shipper, with role privileges based on the recommendations in Beats and Security.

To create a similar user and role in the Management app in Kibana:

  1. Log into the Cloud UI and open the Kibana Management app, accessible from the Security page.
  2. Select the Roles tab, click New Role and give the role the filebeat-writer name.
  3. Specify the right privileges. Under Cluster Privileges, select monitor and manage_index_templates. Under Indeces Privileges, specify read, write, and create_index privileges for the filebeat-* indices that the Beat creates.

    The `filebeat-writer` role
  4. Click Save.
  5. Select the Users tab, click New User and give the user the filebeat_shipper name.
  6. Assign the filebeat-writer role to the user under Roles.

    The `filebeat-internal` user
  7. Enter a password and confirm the password. Make a note of the password and keep it in a secure location.
  8. Click Save.

After the user and role are saved, you can use the new user to authenticate when sending data from Filebeat to your cluster.