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Elastic network drive connector reference

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Elastic network drive connector reference

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The Elastic network drive connector is a connector for network drive data sources.

Availability and prerequisites

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This connector is available as a self-managed connector client using the Python connectors framework. This connector client is compatible with Elastic versions 8.6.0+. To use this connector, satisfy all connector client requirements.

This connector 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.

Usage

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To use this connector as a native connector, see Native connectors logo cloud (managed service).

To use this connector as a connector client, see Connector clients.

Configuration

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When using the connector client workflow, initially these fields will use the default configuration set in the connector source code. These are set in the get_default_configuration function definition.

These configurable fields will be rendered with their respective labels in the Kibana UI. Once connected, you’ll be able to update these values in Kibana.

The following configuration fields are required to set up the connector:

username
The username of the account for the network drive. The user must have at least read permissions for the folder path provided.
password
The password of the account to be used for crawling the network drive.
server_ip
The server IP address where the network drive is hosted. Default value is 127.0.0.1.
server_port
The server port where the network drive service is available. Default value is 445.
drive_path
  • The network drive path the connector will crawl to fetch files. This is the name of the folder shared via SMB. The connector uses the Python smbprotocol library which supports both SMB v2 and v3.
  • Accepts only one path— parent folders can be specified to widen the scope.

  • The drive path should use forward slashes as path separators. Example:

    • admin/bin

Deployment using Docker

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You can deploy the Network drive connector as a self-managed connector client using Docker. Follow these instructions.

Step 1: Download sample configuration file

Download the sample configuration file. You can either download it manually or run the following command:

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/elastic/connectors/main/config.yml.example --output ~/connectors-python-config/config.yml

Remember to update the --output argument value if your directory name is different, or you want to use a different config file name.

Step 2: Update the configuration file for your self-managed connector

Update the configuration file with the following settings to match your environment:

  • elasticsearch.host
  • elasticsearch.password
  • connector_id
  • service_type

Use network_drive as the service_type value. Don’t forget to uncomment "network_drive" in the sources section of the yaml file.

If you’re running the connector service against a Dockerized version of Elasticsearch and Kibana, your config file will look like this:

elasticsearch:
  host: http://host.docker.internal:9200
  username: elastic
  password: <YOUR_PASSWORD>

connector_id: <CONNECTOR_ID_FROM_KIBANA>
service_type: network_drive

sources:
  # UNCOMMENT "network_drive" below to enable the Network drive connector

  #mongodb: connectors.sources.mongo:MongoDataSource
  #s3: connectors.sources.s3:S3DataSource
  #dir: connectors.sources.directory:DirectoryDataSource
  #mysql: connectors.sources.mysql:MySqlDataSource
  #network_drive: connectors.sources.network_drive:NASDataSource
  #google_cloud_storage: connectors.sources.google_cloud_storage:GoogleCloudStorageDataSource
  #azure_blob_storage: connectors.sources.azure_blob_storage:AzureBlobStorageDataSource
  #postgresql: connectors.sources.postgresql:PostgreSQLDataSource
  #oracle: connectors.sources.oracle:OracleDataSource
  #mssql: connectors.sources.mssql:MSSQLDataSource

Note that the config file you downloaded might contain more entries, so you will need to manually copy/change the settings that apply to you. Normally you’ll only need to update elasticsearch.host, elasticsearch.password, connector_id and service_type to run the connector service.

Step 3: Run the Docker image

Run the Docker image with the Connector Service using the following command:

docker run \
-v ~/connectors-python-config:/config \
--network "elastic" \
--tty \
--rm \
docker.elastic.co/enterprise-search/elastic-connectors:8.9.2.0-SNAPSHOT \
/app/bin/elastic-ingest \
-c /config/config.yml

Refer to this guide in the Python framework repository for more details.

Documents and syncs

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The connector syncs folders as separate documents in Elasticsearch. The following fields will be added for the document type folder:

  • create_time
  • title
  • path
  • modified
  • time
  • id
  • Files bigger than 10 MB won’t be extracted.
  • Permission are not synced. All documents indexed to an Elastic deployment will be visible to all users with access to that Elastic Deployment.

Sync rules

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Basic sync rules are identical for all connectors and are available by default.

Advanced sync rules are not available for this connector in the present version. Currently filtering is controlled via ingest pipelines.

Content extraction

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See Content extraction.

End-to-end tests

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The connector framework enables operators to run functional tests against a real data source. Refer to Connector testing for more details.

To execute a functional test for the Network Drive connector client, run the following command:

$ make ftest NAME=network_drive

By default, this will use a medium-sized dataset. For faster tests add the DATA_SIZE=small flag:

make ftest NAME=network_drive DATA_SIZE=small

Known issues

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  • Network Drive Connector may fail to connect to some shares

    In versions prior to 8.15.3, the Network Drive Connector used an older version of the smbprotocol Python library. This version could incorrectly determine protocol parameters if the requesting host met specific edge case criteria.

    You can read more about this bug here: https://github.com/jborean93/smbprotocol/issues/199

    If your Network Drive Connector is failing to connect to your share, consider updating to versions >= 8.15.3.

    See Known issues for any issues affecting all connectors.

Troubleshooting

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See Troubleshooting.

Security

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See Security.

Framework and source

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This connector is included in the Python connectors framework.

View the source code for this connector (branch 8.9, compatible with Elastic 8.9).

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