Secure communication with Elasticsearch

To secure the communication between APM Server and Elasticsearch, you can use HTTPS and basic authentication. Basic authentication for Elasticsearch is available when you enable X-Pack security (see Securing the Elastic Stack and Use X-Pack security). If you aren’t using X-Pack security, you can use a web proxy instead.

Here is a sample configuration:

output.elasticsearch:
  username: apm-server 
  password: verysecret 
  protocol: https 
  hosts: ["elasticsearch.example.com:9200"]

	The username to use for authenticating to Elasticsearch.
	The password to use for authenticating to Elasticsearch.
	This setting enables the HTTPS protocol.
	The IP and port of the Elasticsearch nodes.

To obfuscate passwords and other sensitive settings, use the secrets keystore.

APM Server verifies the validity of the server certificates and only accepts trusted certificates. Creating a correct SSL/TLS infrastructure is outside the scope of this document.

By default APM Server uses the list of trusted certificate authorities from the operating system where APM Server is running. You can configure APM Server to use a specific list of CA certificates instead of the list from the OS. You can also configure it to use client authentication by specifying the certificate and key to use when the server requires the Beat to authenticate. Here is an example configuration:

output.elasticsearch:
  username: apm-server
  password: verysecret
  protocol: https
  hosts: ["elasticsearch.example.com:9200"]
  ssl.certificate_authorities: 
    - /etc/pki/my_root_ca.pem
    - /etc/pki/my_other_ca.pem
  ssl.certificate: "/etc/pki/client.pem" 
  ssl.key: "/etc/pki/key.pem"

	The list of CA certificates to trust
	The path to the certificate for SSL client authentication
	The client certificate key

For any given connection, the SSL/TLS certificates must have a subject that matches the value specified for hosts, or the SSL handshake fails. For example, if you specify hosts: ["foobar:9200"], the certificate MUST include foobar in the subject (CN=foobar) or as a subject alternative name (SAN). Make sure the hostname resolves to the correct IP address. If no DNS is available, then you can associate the IP address with your hostname in /etc/hosts (on Unix) or C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts (on Windows).

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