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ECS in Logstash

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ECS in Logstash

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The Elastic Common Schema (ECS) is an open source specification, developed with support from the Elastic user community. ECS defines a common set of fields to be used for storing event data, such as logs and metrics, in Elasticsearch. With ECS, users can normalize event data to better analyze, visualize, and correlate the data represented in their events.

ECS compatibility

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Many plugins implement an ECS-compatibility mode, which causes them to produce and manipulate events in a manner that is compatible with the Elastic Common Schema (ECS).

Any plugin that supports this mode will also have an ecs_compatibility option, which allows you to configure which mode the individual plugin instance should operate in. If left unspecified for an individual plugin, the pipeline’s pipeline.ecs_compatibility setting will be observed. This allows you to configure plugins to use a specific version of ECS or to use their legacy non-ECS behavior.

ECS compatibility modes do not prevent you from explicitly configuring a plugin in a manner that conflicts with ECS. Instead, they ensure that implicit configuration avoids conflicts.

Configuring ECS

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In Logstash 8, all plugins are run in ECS compatibility v8 mode by default, but you can opt out at the plugin, pipeline, or system level to maintain legacy behavior. This can be helpful if you have very complex pipelines that were defined pre-ECS, to allow you to either upgrade them or to avoid doing so independently of your Logstash 8.x upgrade.

Specific plugin instance

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Use a plugin’s ecs_compatibility option to override the default value on the plugin instance.

For example, if you want a specific instance of the GeoIP Filter to behave without ECS compatibility, you can adjust its definition in your pipeline without affecting any other plugin instances.

filter {
  geoip {
    source => "[host][ip]"
    ecs_compatibility => disabled
  }
}

Alternatively, if you had a UDP input with a CEF codec, and wanted both to use an ECS mode while still running Logstash 7, you can adjust their definitions to specify the major version of ECS to use.

input {
  udp {
    port => 1234
    ecs_compatibility => v8
    codec => cef {
      ecs_compatibility => v8
    }
  }
}

All plugins in a given pipeline

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If you wish to provide a specific default value for ecs_compatibility to all plugins in a pipeline, you can do so with the pipeline.ecs_compatibility setting in your pipeline definition in config/pipelines.yml or Central Management. This setting will be used unless overridden by a specific plugin instance. If unspecified for an individual pipeline, the global value will be used.

For example, setting pipeline.ecs_compatibility: disabled for a pipeline locks in that pipeline’s pre-Logstash 8 behavior.

- pipeline.id: my-legacy-pipeline
  path.config: "/etc/path/to/legacy-pipeline.config"
  pipeline.ecs_compatibility: disabled
- pipeline.id: my-ecs-pipeline
  path.config: "/etc/path/to/ecs-pipeline.config"
  pipeline.ecs_compatibility: v8

All plugins in all pipelines

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Similarly, you can set the default value for the whole Logstash process by setting the pipeline.ecs_compatibility value in config/logstash.yml.

pipeline.ecs_compatibility: disabled

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