Collecting monitoring data using legacy collectors
editCollecting monitoring data using legacy collectors
editDeprecated in 7.16.
Using the Elasticsearch Monitoring plugin to collect and ship monitoring data is deprecated. Elastic Agent and Metricbeat are the recommended methods for collecting and shipping monitoring data to a monitoring cluster. If you previously configured legacy collection methods, you should migrate to using Elastic Agent or Metricbeat collection methods.
This method for collecting metrics about Elasticsearch involves sending the metrics to the monitoring cluster by using exporters.
Advanced monitoring settings enable you to control how frequently data is collected, configure timeouts, and set the retention period for locally-stored monitoring indices. You can also adjust how monitoring data is displayed.
To learn about monitoring in general, see Monitor a cluster.
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Configure your cluster to collect monitoring data:
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Verify that the
xpack.monitoring.elasticsearch.collection.enabled
setting istrue
, which is its default value, on each node in the cluster.You can specify this setting in either the
elasticsearch.yml
on each node or across the cluster as a dynamic cluster setting. If Elasticsearch security features are enabled, you must havemonitor
cluster privileges to view the cluster settings andmanage
cluster privileges to change them.For more information, see Monitoring settings and Cluster update settings.
-
Set the
xpack.monitoring.collection.enabled
setting totrue
on each node in the cluster. By default, it is disabled (false
).You can specify this setting in either the
elasticsearch.yml
on each node or across the cluster as a dynamic cluster setting. If Elasticsearch security features are enabled, you must havemonitor
cluster privileges to view the cluster settings andmanage
cluster privileges to change them.For example, use the following APIs to review and change this setting:
response = client.cluster.get_settings puts response
GET _cluster/settings
response = client.cluster.put_settings( body: { persistent: { 'xpack.monitoring.collection.enabled' => true } } ) puts response
PUT _cluster/settings { "persistent": { "xpack.monitoring.collection.enabled": true } }
Alternatively, you can enable this setting in Kibana. In the side navigation, click Monitoring. If data collection is disabled, you are prompted to turn it on.
For more information, see Monitoring settings and Cluster update settings.
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Optional: Specify which indices you want to monitor.
By default, the monitoring agent collects data from all Elasticsearch indices. To collect data from particular indices, configure the
xpack.monitoring.collection.indices
setting. You can specify multiple indices as a comma-separated list or use an index pattern to match multiple indices. For example:xpack.monitoring.collection.indices: logstash-*, index1, test2
You can prepend
-
to explicitly exclude index names or patterns. For example, to include all indices that start withtest
excepttest3
, you could specifytest*,-test3
. To include system indices such as .security and .kibana, add.*
to the list of included names. For example.*,test*,-test3
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Optional: Specify how often to collect monitoring data. The default value for
the
xpack.monitoring.collection.interval
setting 10 seconds. See Monitoring settings.
-
-
Identify where to store monitoring data.
By default, the data is stored on the same cluster by using a
local
exporter. Alternatively, you can use anhttp
exporter to send data to a separate monitoring cluster.The Elasticsearch monitoring features use ingest pipelines, therefore the cluster that stores the monitoring data must have at least one ingest node.
For more information about typical monitoring architectures, see How it works.
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If you choose to use an
http
exporter:-
On the cluster that you want to monitor (often called the production cluster), configure each node to send metrics to your monitoring cluster. Configure an HTTP exporter in the
xpack.monitoring.exporters
settings in theelasticsearch.yml
file. For example:xpack.monitoring.exporters: id1: type: http host: ["http://es-mon-1:9200", "http://es-mon-2:9200"]
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If the Elastic security features are enabled on the monitoring cluster, you must provide appropriate credentials when data is shipped to the monitoring cluster:
-
Create a user on the monitoring cluster that has the
remote_monitoring_agent
built-in role. Alternatively, use theremote_monitoring_user
built-in user. -
Add the user ID and password settings to the HTTP exporter settings in the
elasticsearch.yml
file and keystore on each node.For example:
xpack.monitoring.exporters: id1: type: http host: ["http://es-mon-1:9200", "http://es-mon-2:9200"] auth.username: remote_monitoring_user # "xpack.monitoring.exporters.id1.auth.secure_password" must be set in the keystore
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Create a user on the monitoring cluster that has the
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If you configured the monitoring cluster to use encrypted communications, you must use the HTTPS protocol in the
host
setting. You must also specify the trusted CA certificates that will be used to verify the identity of the nodes in the monitoring cluster.-
To add a CA certificate to an Elasticsearch node’s trusted certificates, you can specify the location of the PEM encoded certificate with the
certificate_authorities
setting. For example:xpack.monitoring.exporters: id1: type: http host: ["https://es-mon1:9200", "https://es-mon-2:9200"] auth: username: remote_monitoring_user # "xpack.monitoring.exporters.id1.auth.secure_password" must be set in the keystore ssl: certificate_authorities: [ "/path/to/ca.crt" ]
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Alternatively, you can configure trusted certificates using a truststore (a Java Keystore file that contains the certificates). For example:
xpack.monitoring.exporters: id1: type: http host: ["https://es-mon1:9200", "https://es-mon-2:9200"] auth: username: remote_monitoring_user # "xpack.monitoring.exporters.id1.auth.secure_password" must be set in the keystore ssl: truststore.path: /path/to/file truststore.password: password
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- Configure your cluster to route monitoring data from sources such as Kibana, Beats, and Logstash to the monitoring cluster. For information about configuring each product to collect and send monitoring data, see Monitor a cluster.
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If you updated settings in the
elasticsearch.yml
files on your production cluster, restart Elasticsearch. See Stopping Elasticsearch and Starting Elasticsearch.You may want to temporarily disable shard allocation before you restart your nodes to avoid unnecessary shard reallocation during the install process.
- Optional: Configure the indices that store the monitoring data.
- View the monitoring data in Kibana.