Elasticsearch output plugin
editElasticsearch output plugin
edit- Plugin version: v10.4.2
- Released on: 2020-04-23
- Changelog
For other versions, see the Versioned plugin docs.
Getting Help
editFor questions about the plugin, open a topic in the Discuss forums. For bugs or feature requests, open an issue in Github. For the list of Elastic supported plugins, please consult the Elastic Support Matrix.
Description
editCompatibility Note
When connected to Elasticsearch 7.x, modern versions of this plugin
use the required _doc
document-type when inserting documents.
If you are using an earlier version of Logstash and wish to connect to Elasticsearch 7.x, first upgrade Logstash to version 6.8 to ensure it picks up changes to the Elasticsearch index template.
If you are using a custom template
,
ensure your template uses the _doc
document-type before
connecting to Elasticsearch 7.x.
Compatibility Note
Starting with Elasticsearch 5.3, there’s an HTTP setting
called http.content_type.required
. If this option is set to true
, and you
are using Logstash 2.4 through 5.2, you need to update the Elasticsearch output
plugin to version 6.2.5 or higher.
If you plan to use the Kibana web interface, use the Elasticsearch output plugin to get your log data into Elasticsearch.
You can run Elasticsearch on your own hardware, or use our hosted Elasticsearch Service on Elastic Cloud. The Elasticsearch Service is available on both AWS and GCP. Try the Elasticsearch Service for free.
This output only speaks the HTTP protocol. HTTP is the preferred protocol for interacting with Elasticsearch as of Logstash 2.0. We strongly encourage the use of HTTP over the node protocol for a number of reasons. HTTP is only marginally slower, yet far easier to administer and work with. When using the HTTP protocol one may upgrade Elasticsearch versions without having to upgrade Logstash in lock-step.
You can learn more about Elasticsearch at https://www.elastic.co/products/elasticsearch
Template management for Elasticsearch 5.x
editIndex template for this version (Logstash 5.0) has been changed to reflect Elasticsearch’s mapping changes in version 5.0.
Most importantly, the subfield for string multi-fields has changed from .raw
to .keyword
to match ES default
behavior.
Users installing ES 5.x and LS 5.x
This change will not affect you and you will continue to use the ES defaults.
Users upgrading from LS 2.x to LS 5.x with ES 5.x
LS will not force upgrade the template, if logstash
template already exists. This means you will still use
.raw
for sub-fields coming from 2.x. If you choose to use the new template, you will have to reindex your data after
the new template is installed.
Writing to different indices: best practices
editYou cannot use dynamic variable substitution when ilm_enabled
is true
and
when using ilm_rollover_alias
.
If you’re sending events to the same Elasticsearch cluster but you’re targeting different indices you can:
-
use different Elasticsearch outputs, each one with a different value for the
index
parameter -
use one Elasticsearch output and use the dynamic variable substitution for the
index
parameter
Each Elasticsearch output is a new client connected to the cluster:
- it has to initialize the client and connect to Elasticsearch (restart time is longer if you have more clients)
- it has an associated connection pool
In order to minimize the number of open connections to Elasticsearch, maximize the bulk size and reduce the number of "small" bulk requests (which could easily fill up the queue), it is usually more efficient to have a single Elasticsearch output.
Example:
output { elasticsearch { index => "%{[some_field][sub_field]}-%{+YYYY.MM.dd}" } }
What to do in case there is no field in the event containing the destination index prefix?
You can use the mutate
filter and conditionals to add a [@metadata]
field (see https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/logstash/7.6/event-dependent-configuration.html#metadata) to set
the destination index for each event. The [@metadata]
fields will not be sent to Elasticsearch.
Example:
filter { if [log_type] in [ "test", "staging" ] { mutate { add_field => { "[@metadata][target_index]" => "test-%{+YYYY.MM}" } } } else if [log_type] == "production" { mutate { add_field => { "[@metadata][target_index]" => "prod-%{+YYYY.MM.dd}" } } } else { mutate { add_field => { "[@metadata][target_index]" => "unknown-%{+YYYY}" } } } } output { elasticsearch { index => "%{[@metadata][target_index]}" } }
Retry Policy
editThe retry policy has changed significantly in the 8.1.1 release. This plugin uses the Elasticsearch bulk API to optimize its imports into Elasticsearch. These requests may experience either partial or total failures. The bulk API sends batches of requests to an HTTP endpoint. Error codes for the HTTP request are handled differently than error codes for individual documents.
HTTP requests to the bulk API are expected to return a 200 response code. All other response codes are retried indefinitely.
The following document errors are handled as follows:
- 400 and 404 errors are sent to the dead letter queue (DLQ), if enabled. If a DLQ is not enabled, a log message will be emitted, and the event will be dropped. See DLQ Policy for more info.
- 409 errors (conflict) are logged as a warning and dropped.
Note that 409 exceptions are no longer retried. Please set a higher retry_on_conflict
value if you experience 409 exceptions.
It is more performant for Elasticsearch to retry these exceptions than this plugin.
DLQ Policy
editMapping (404) errors from Elasticsearch can lead to data loss. Unfortunately mapping errors cannot be handled without human intervention and without looking at the field that caused the mapping mismatch. If the DLQ is enabled, the original events causing the mapping errors are stored in a file that can be processed at a later time. Often times, the offending field can be removed and re-indexed to Elasticsearch. If the DLQ is not enabled, and a mapping error happens, the problem is logged as a warning, and the event is dropped. See Dead Letter Queues for more information about processing events in the DLQ.
Index Lifecycle Management
editThe Index Lifecycle Management feature requires plugin version 9.3.1
or higher.
This feature requires an Elasticsearch instance of 6.6.0 or higher with at least a Basic license
Logstash can use Index Lifecycle Management to automate the management of indices over time.
The use of Index Lifecycle Management is controlled by the ilm_enabled
setting. By default, this setting detects whether the Elasticsearch instance
supports ILM, and uses it if it is available. ilm_enabled
can also be set to
true
or false
to override the automatic detection, or disable ILM.
This will overwrite the index settings and adjust the Logstash template to write the necessary settings for the template to support index lifecycle management, including the index policy and rollover alias to be used.
Logstash will create a rollover alias for the indices to be written to, including a pattern for how the actual indices will be named, and unless an ILM policy that already exists has been specified, a default policy will also be created. The default policy is configured to rollover an index when it reaches either 50 gigabytes in size, or is 30 days old, whichever happens first.
The default rollover alias is called logstash
, with a default pattern for the rollover index of {now/d}-00001
,
which will name indices on the date that the index is rolled over, followed by an incrementing number. Note that the pattern must end with a dash and a number that will be incremented.
See the Rollover API documentation for more details on naming.
The rollover alias, ilm pattern and policy can be modified.
See config below for an example:
output { elasticsearch { ilm_rollover_alias => "custom" ilm_pattern => "000001" ilm_policy => "custom_policy" } }
Custom ILM policies must already exist on the Elasticsearch cluster before they can be used.
If the rollover alias or pattern is modified, the index template will need to be overwritten as the settings index.lifecycle.name
and index.lifecycle.rollover_alias
are automatically written to the template
If the index property is supplied in the output definition, it will be overwritten by the rollover alias.
Batch Sizes
editThis plugin attempts to send batches of events as a single request. However, if a request exceeds 20MB we will break it up into multiple batch requests. If a single document exceeds 20MB it will be sent as a single request.
DNS Caching
editThis plugin uses the JVM to lookup DNS entries and is subject to the value of networkaddress.cache.ttl, a global setting for the JVM.
As an example, to set your DNS TTL to 1 second you would set
the LS_JAVA_OPTS
environment variable to -Dnetworkaddress.cache.ttl=1
.
Keep in mind that a connection with keepalive enabled will not reevaluate its DNS value while the keepalive is in effect.
HTTP Compression
editThis plugin supports request and response compression. Response compression is enabled by default and
for Elasticsearch versions 5.0 and later, the user doesn’t have to set any configs in Elasticsearch for
it to send back compressed response. For versions before 5.0, http.compression
must be set to true
in
Elasticsearch to take advantage of response compression when using this plugin
For requests compression, regardless of the Elasticsearch version, users have to enable http_compression
setting in their Logstash config file.
Elasticsearch Output Configuration Options
editThis plugin supports the following configuration options plus the Common Options described later.
Setting | Input type | Required |
---|---|---|
No |
||
No |
||
a valid filesystem path |
No |
|
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
string, one of |
No |
|
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
a valid filesystem path |
No |
|
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
string, one of |
No |
|
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
a valid filesystem path |
No |
|
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
a valid filesystem path |
No |
|
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
string, one of |
No |
Also see Common Options for a list of options supported by all output plugins.
action
edit- Value type is string
-
Default value is
"index"
Protocol agnostic (i.e. non-http, non-java specific) configs go here Protocol agnostic methods The Elasticsearch action to perform. Valid actions are:
- index: indexes a document (an event from Logstash).
- delete: deletes a document by id (An id is required for this action)
- create: indexes a document, fails if a document by that id already exists in the index.
-
update: updates a document by id. Update has a special case where you can upsert — update a
document if not already present. See the
doc_as_upsert
option. NOTE: This does not work and is not supported in Elasticsearch 1.x. Please upgrade to ES 2.x or greater to use this feature with Logstash! -
A sprintf style string to change the action based on the content of the event. The value
%{[foo]}
would use the foo field for the action
For more details on actions, check out the Elasticsearch bulk API documentation
bulk_path
edit- Value type is string
- There is no default value for this setting.
HTTP Path to perform the _bulk requests to this defaults to a concatenation of the path parameter and "_bulk"
cacert
edit- Value type is path
- There is no default value for this setting.
The .cer or .pem file to validate the server’s certificate
cloud_auth
edit- Value type is password
- There is no default value for this setting.
Cloud authentication string ("<username>:<password>" format) is an alternative for the user
/password
pair.
For more details, check out the Logstash-to-Cloud documentation
cloud_id
edit- Value type is string
- There is no default value for this setting.
Cloud ID, from the Elastic Cloud web console. If set hosts
should not be used.
For more details, check out the Logstash-to-Cloud documentation
doc_as_upsert
edit- Value type is boolean
-
Default value is
false
Enable doc_as_upsert
for update mode.
Create a new document with source if document_id
doesn’t exist in Elasticsearch
document_id
edit- Value type is string
- There is no default value for this setting.
The document ID for the index. Useful for overwriting existing entries in Elasticsearch with the same ID.
document_type
edit- Value type is string
- There is no default value for this setting.
- This option is deprecated
This option is deprecated due to the removal of types in Elasticsearch 6.0. It will be removed in the next major version of Logstash.
This value is ignored and has no effect for Elasticsearch clusters 8.x
.
This sets the document type to write events to. Generally you should try to write only
similar events to the same type. String expansion %{foo}
works here.
If you don’t set a value for this option:
- for elasticsearch clusters 8.x: no value will be used;
- for elasticsearch clusters 7.x: the value of _doc will be used;
- for elasticsearch clusters 6.x: the value of doc will be used;
- for elasticsearch clusters 5.x and below: the event’s type field will be used, if the field is not present the value of doc will be used.
failure_type_logging_whitelist
edit- Value type is array
-
Default value is
[]
Set the Elasticsearch errors in the whitelist that you don’t want to log.
A useful example is when you want to skip all 409 errors
which are document_already_exists_exception
.
custom_headers
edit- Value type is hash
- There is no default value for this setting.
Pass a set of key value pairs as the headers sent in each request to
an elasticsearch node. The headers will be used for any kind of request
(_bulk request, template installation, health checks and sniffing).
These custom headers will be overidden by settings like http_compression
.
healthcheck_path
edit- Value type is string
- There is no default value for this setting.
HTTP Path where a HEAD request is sent when a backend is marked down the request is sent in the background to see if it has come back again before it is once again eligible to service requests. If you have custom firewall rules you may need to change this
hosts
edit- Value type is uri
-
Default value is
[//127.0.0.1]
Sets the host(s) of the remote instance. If given an array it will load balance requests across the hosts specified in the hosts
parameter.
Remember the http
protocol uses the http address (eg. 9200, not 9300).
"127.0.0.1"
["127.0.0.1:9200","127.0.0.2:9200"]
["http://127.0.0.1"]
["https://127.0.0.1:9200"]
["https://127.0.0.1:9200/mypath"]
(If using a proxy on a subpath)
It is important to exclude dedicated master nodes from the hosts
list
to prevent LS from sending bulk requests to the master nodes. So this parameter should only reference either data or client nodes in Elasticsearch.
Any special characters present in the URLs here MUST be URL escaped! This means #
should be put in as %23
for instance.
http_compression
edit- Value type is boolean
-
Default value is
false
Enable gzip compression on requests. Note that response compression is on by default for Elasticsearch v5.0 and beyond
ilm_enabled
edit-
Value can be any of:
true
,false
,auto
-
Default value is
auto
The default setting of auto
will automatically enable the Index Lifecycle Management feature, if the Elasticsearch
cluster is running Elasticsearch version 7.0.0
or higher with the ILM feature enabled, and disable it otherwise.
Setting this flag to false
will disable the Index Lifecycle Management feature, even if the Elasticsearch cluster supports ILM.
Setting this flag to true
will enable Index Lifecycle Management feature, if the Elasticsearch cluster supports it. This is required
to enable Index Lifecycle Management on a version of Elasticsearch earlier than version 7.0.0
.
This feature requires a Basic License or above to be installed on an Elasticsearch cluster version 6.6.0 or later
ilm_pattern
edit- Value type is string
-
Default value is
{now/d}-000001
Pattern used for generating indices managed by Index Lifecycle Management. The value specified in the pattern will be appended to the write alias, and incremented automatically when a new index is created by ILM.
Date Math can be used when specifying an ilm pattern, see Rollover API docs for details
Updating the pattern will require the index template to be rewritten
The pattern must finish with a dash and a number that will be automatically incremented when indices rollover.
ilm_policy
edit- Value type is string
-
Default value is
logstash
Modify this setting to use a custom Index Lifecycle Management policy, rather than the default. If this value is not set, the default policy will be automatically installed into Elasticsearch
If this setting is specified, the policy must already exist in Elasticsearch cluster.
ilm_rollover_alias
edit- Value type is string
-
Default value is
logstash
The rollover alias is the alias where indices managed using Index Lifecycle Management will be written to.
If both index
and ilm_rollover_alias
are specified, ilm_rollover_alias
takes precedence.
Updating the rollover alias will require the index template to be rewritten
ilm_rollover_alias
does NOT support dynamic variable substitution as index
does.
index
edit- Value type is string
-
Default value is
"logstash-%{+yyyy.MM.dd}"
The index to write events to. This can be dynamic using the %{foo}
syntax.
The default value will partition your indices by day so you can more easily
delete old data or only search specific date ranges.
Indexes may not contain uppercase characters.
For weekly indexes ISO 8601 format is recommended, eg. logstash-%{+xxxx.ww}.
LS uses Joda to format the index pattern from event timestamp.
Joda formats are defined here.
keystore
edit- Value type is path
- There is no default value for this setting.
The keystore used to present a certificate to the server. It can be either .jks or .p12
keystore_password
edit- Value type is password
- There is no default value for this setting.
Set the keystore password
manage_template
edit- Value type is boolean
-
Default value is
true
From Logstash 1.3 onwards, a template is applied to Elasticsearch during
Logstash’s startup if one with the name template_name
does not already exist.
By default, the contents of this template is the default template for
logstash-%{+YYYY.MM.dd}
which always matches indices based on the pattern
logstash-*
. Should you require support for other index names, or would like
to change the mappings in the template in general, a custom template can be
specified by setting template
to the path of a template file.
Setting manage_template
to false disables this feature. If you require more
control over template creation, (e.g. creating indices dynamically based on
field names) you should set manage_template
to false and use the REST
API to apply your templates manually.
parameters
edit- Value type is hash
- There is no default value for this setting.
Pass a set of key value pairs as the URL query string. This query string is added to every host listed in the hosts configuration. If the hosts list contains urls that already have query strings, the one specified here will be appended.
parent
edit- Value type is string
-
Default value is
nil
For child documents, ID of the associated parent.
This can be dynamic using the %{foo}
syntax.
password
edit- Value type is password
- There is no default value for this setting.
Password to authenticate to a secure Elasticsearch cluster
path
edit- Value type is string
- There is no default value for this setting.
HTTP Path at which the Elasticsearch server lives. Use this if you must run Elasticsearch behind a proxy that remaps the root path for the Elasticsearch HTTP API lives. Note that if you use paths as components of URLs in the hosts field you may not also set this field. That will raise an error at startup
pipeline
edit- Value type is string
-
Default value is
nil
Set which ingest pipeline you wish to execute for an event. You can also use event dependent configuration
here like pipeline => "%{INGEST_PIPELINE}"
pool_max
edit- Value type is number
-
Default value is
1000
While the output tries to reuse connections efficiently we have a maximum. This sets the maximum number of open connections the output will create. Setting this too low may mean frequently closing / opening connections which is bad.
pool_max_per_route
edit- Value type is number
-
Default value is
100
While the output tries to reuse connections efficiently we have a maximum per endpoint. This sets the maximum number of open connections per endpoint the output will create. Setting this too low may mean frequently closing / opening connections which is bad.
proxy
edit- Value type is uri
- There is no default value for this setting.
Set the address of a forward HTTP proxy.
This setting accepts only URI arguments to prevent leaking credentials.
An empty string is treated as if proxy was not set. This is useful when using
environment variables e.g. proxy => '${LS_PROXY:}'
.
resurrect_delay
edit- Value type is number
-
Default value is
5
How frequently, in seconds, to wait between resurrection attempts. Resurrection is the process by which backend endpoints marked down are checked to see if they have come back to life
retry_initial_interval
edit- Value type is number
-
Default value is
2
Set initial interval in seconds between bulk retries. Doubled on each retry up to retry_max_interval
retry_max_interval
edit- Value type is number
-
Default value is
64
Set max interval in seconds between bulk retries.
retry_on_conflict
edit- Value type is number
-
Default value is
1
The number of times Elasticsearch should internally retry an update/upserted document.
routing
edit- Value type is string
- There is no default value for this setting.
A routing override to be applied to all processed events.
This can be dynamic using the %{foo}
syntax.
script
edit- Value type is string
-
Default value is
""
Set script name for scripted update mode
Example:
output { elasticsearch { script => "ctx._source.message = params.event.get('message')" } }
script_lang
edit- Value type is string
-
Default value is
"painless"
Set the language of the used script. If not set, this defaults to painless in ES 5.0.
When using indexed (stored) scripts on Elasticsearch 6 and higher, you must set this parameter to ""
(empty string).
script_type
edit-
Value can be any of:
inline
,indexed
,file
-
Default value is
["inline"]
Define the type of script referenced by "script" variable inline : "script" contains inline script indexed : "script" contains the name of script directly indexed in elasticsearch file : "script" contains the name of script stored in elasticsearch’s config directory
script_var_name
edit- Value type is string
-
Default value is
"event"
Set variable name passed to script (scripted update)
scripted_upsert
edit- Value type is boolean
-
Default value is
false
if enabled, script is in charge of creating non-existent document (scripted update)
sniffing
edit- Value type is boolean
-
Default value is
false
This setting asks Elasticsearch for the list of all cluster nodes and adds them to the hosts list.
For Elasticsearch 1.x and 2.x any nodes with http.enabled
(on by default) will be added to the hosts list, including master-only nodes!
For Elasticsearch 5.x and 6.x any nodes with http.enabled
(on by default) will be added to the hosts list, excluding master-only nodes.
sniffing_delay
edit- Value type is number
-
Default value is
5
How long to wait, in seconds, between sniffing attempts
sniffing_path
edit- Value type is string
- There is no default value for this setting.
HTTP Path to be used for the sniffing requests the default value is computed by concatenating the path value and "_nodes/http" if sniffing_path is set it will be used as an absolute path do not use full URL here, only paths, e.g. "/sniff/_nodes/http"
ssl
edit- Value type is boolean
- There is no default value for this setting.
Enable SSL/TLS secured communication to Elasticsearch cluster. Leaving this unspecified will use whatever scheme is specified in the URLs listed in hosts. If no explicit protocol is specified plain HTTP will be used. If SSL is explicitly disabled here the plugin will refuse to start if an HTTPS URL is given in hosts
ssl_certificate_verification
edit- Value type is boolean
-
Default value is
true
Option to validate the server’s certificate. Disabling this severely compromises security. For more information on disabling certificate verification please read https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~shmat/shmat_ccs12.pdf
template
edit- Value type is path
- There is no default value for this setting.
You can set the path to your own template here, if you so desire. If not set, the included template will be used.
template_name
edit- Value type is string
-
Default value is
"logstash"
This configuration option defines how the template is named inside Elasticsearch. Note that if you have used the template management features and subsequently change this, you will need to prune the old template manually, e.g.
curl -XDELETE <http://localhost:9200/_template/OldTemplateName?pretty>
where OldTemplateName
is whatever the former setting was.
template_overwrite
edit- Value type is boolean
-
Default value is
false
The template_overwrite option will always overwrite the indicated template in Elasticsearch with either the one indicated by template or the included one. This option is set to false by default. If you always want to stay up to date with the template provided by Logstash, this option could be very useful to you. Likewise, if you have your own template file managed by puppet, for example, and you wanted to be able to update it regularly, this option could help there as well.
Please note that if you are using your own customized version of the Logstash template (logstash), setting this to true will make Logstash to overwrite the "logstash" template (i.e. removing all customized settings)
timeout
edit- Value type is number
-
Default value is
60
Set the timeout, in seconds, for network operations and requests sent Elasticsearch. If a timeout occurs, the request will be retried.
truststore
edit- Value type is path
- There is no default value for this setting.
The truststore to validate the server’s certificate.
It can be either .jks or .p12.
Use either :truststore
or :cacert
.
truststore_password
edit- Value type is password
- There is no default value for this setting.
Set the truststore password
upsert
edit- Value type is string
-
Default value is
""
Set upsert content for update mode.
Create a new document with this parameter as json string if document_id
doesn’t exists
user
edit- Value type is string
- There is no default value for this setting.
Username to authenticate to a secure Elasticsearch cluster
validate_after_inactivity
edit- Value type is number
-
Default value is
10000
How long to wait before checking if the connection is stale before executing a request on a connection using keepalive. You may want to set this lower, if you get connection errors regularly Quoting the Apache commons docs (this client is based Apache Commmons): Defines period of inactivity in milliseconds after which persistent connections must be re-validated prior to being leased to the consumer. Non-positive value passed to this method disables connection validation. This check helps detect connections that have become stale (half-closed) while kept inactive in the pool. See these docs for more info
version
edit- Value type is string
- There is no default value for this setting.
The version to use for indexing. Use sprintf syntax like %{my_version}
to use a field value here.
See https://www.elastic.co/blog/elasticsearch-versioning-support.
version_type
edit-
Value can be any of:
internal
,external
,external_gt
,external_gte
,force
- There is no default value for this setting.
The version_type to use for indexing. See https://www.elastic.co/blog/elasticsearch-versioning-support. See also https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/7.6/docs-index_.html#_version_types
Common Options
editThe following configuration options are supported by all output plugins:
Setting | Input type | Required |
---|---|---|
No |
||
No |
enable_metric
edit- Value type is boolean
-
Default value is
true
Disable or enable metric logging for this specific plugin instance. By default we record all the metrics we can, but you can disable metrics collection for a specific plugin.
id
edit- Value type is string
- There is no default value for this setting.
Add a unique ID
to the plugin configuration. If no ID is specified, Logstash will generate one.
It is strongly recommended to set this ID in your configuration. This is particularly useful
when you have two or more plugins of the same type. For example, if you have 2 elasticsearch outputs.
Adding a named ID in this case will help in monitoring Logstash when using the monitoring APIs.
output { elasticsearch { id => "my_plugin_id" } }