Fluent::Plugin::Elasticsearch, a plugin for Fluentd
Send your logs to Elasticsearch (and search them with Kibana maybe?)
Note: For Amazon Elasticsearch Service please consider using fluent-plugin-aws-elasticsearch-service
Current maintainers: @cosmo0920
- Installation
- Usage
- Configuration
- hosts
- user, password, path, scheme, ssl_verify
- logstash_format
- logstash_prefix
- logstash_prefix_separator
- logstash_dateformat
- pipeline
- time_key_format
- time_precision
- time_key
- time_key_exclude_timestamp
- include_timestamp
- utc_index
- target_index_key
- target_type_key
- template_name
- template_file
- template_overwrite
- templates
- request_timeout
- reload_connections
- reload_on_failure
- resurrect_after
- include_tag_key, tag_key
- id_key
- parent_key
- routing_key
- remove_keys
- remove_keys_on_update
- remove_keys_on_update_key
- retry_tag
- write_operation
- time_parse_error_tag
- reconnect_on_error
- with_transporter_log
- content_type
- Client/host certificate options
- Proxy Support
- Buffer options
- Hash flattening
- Generate Hash ID
- Not seeing a config you need?
- Dynamic configuration
- Placeholders
- Multi workers
- Contact
- Contributing
- Running tests
Requirements
fluent-plugin-elasticsearch | fluentd | ruby |
---|---|---|
>= 2.0.0 | >= v0.14.20 | >= 2.1 |
< 2.0.0 | >= v0.12.0 | >= 1.9 |
NOTE: For v0.12 version, you should use 1.x.y version. Please send patch into v0.12 branch if you encountered 1.x version's bug.
NOTE: This documentation is for fluent-plugin-elasticsearch 2.x or later. For 1.x documentation, please see v0.12 branch.
Installation
$ gem install fluent-plugin-elasticsearch
Usage
In your Fluentd configuration, use @type elasticsearch
. Additional configuration is optional, default values would look like this:
<match my.logs>
@type elasticsearch
host localhost
port 9200
index_name fluentd
type_name fluentd
</match>
Index templates
This plugin creates Elasticsearch indices by merely writing to them. Consider using Index Templates to gain control of what get indexed and how. See this example for a good starting point.
Configuration
hosts
hosts host1:port1,host2:port2,host3:port3
You can specify multiple Elasticsearch hosts with separator ",".
If you specify multiple hosts, this plugin will load balance updates to Elasticsearch. This is an elasticsearch-ruby feature, the default strategy is round-robin.
Note: Up until v2.8.5, it was allowed to embed the username/password in the URL. However, this syntax is deprecated as of v2.8.6 because it was found to cause serious connection problems (See #394). Please migrate your settings to use the user
and password
field (described below) instead.
user, password, path, scheme, ssl_verify
If you specify this option, host and port options are ignored.
user demo
password secret
path /elastic_search/
scheme https
You can specify user and password for HTTP Basic authentication.
And this plugin will escape required URL encoded characters within %{}
placeholders.
user %{demo+}
password %{@secret}
Specify ssl_verify false
to skip ssl verification (defaults to true)
logstash_format
logstash_format true # defaults to false
This is meant to make writing data into Elasticsearch indices compatible to what Logstash calls them. By doing this, one could take advantage of Kibana. See logstash_prefix and logstash_dateformat to customize this index name pattern. The index name will be #{logstash_prefix}-#{formated_date}
⚠️ Setting this option to true
will ignore the index_name
setting. The default index name prefix is logstash-
.
include_timestamp
include_timestamp true # defaults to false
Adds a @timestamp
field to the log, following all settings logstash_format
does, except without the restrictions on index_name
. This allows one to log to an alias in Elasticsearch and utilize the rollover API.
logstash_prefix
logstash_prefix mylogs # defaults to "logstash"
logstash_prefix_separator
logstash_prefix_separator _ # defaults to "-"
logstash_dateformat
The strftime format to generate index target index name when logstash_format
is set to true. By default, the records are inserted into index logstash-YYYY.MM.DD
. This option, alongwith logstash_prefix
lets us insert into specified index like mylogs-YYYYMM
for a monthly index.
logstash_dateformat %Y.%m. # defaults to "%Y.%m.%d"
pipeline
Only in ES >= 5.x is available to use this parameter. This param is to set a pipeline id of your elasticsearch to be added into the request, you can configure ingest node. For more information: []
pipeline pipeline_id
time_key_format
The format of the time stamp field (@timestamp
or what you specify with time_key). This parameter only has an effect when logstash_format is true as it only affects the name of the index we write to. Please see Time#strftime for information about the value of this format.
Setting this to a known format can vastly improve your log ingestion speed if all most of your logs are in the same format. If there is an error parsing this format the timestamp will default to the ingestion time. If you are on Ruby 2.0 or later you can get a further performance improvment by installing the "strptime" gem: fluent-gem install strptime
.
For example to parse ISO8601 times with sub-second precision:
time_key_format %Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%N%z
time_precision
Should the record not include a time_key
, define the degree of sub-second time precision to preserve from the time
portion of the routed event.
For example, should your input plugin not include a time_key
in the record but it able to pass a time
to the router when emitting the event (AWS CloudWatch events are an example of this), then this setting will allow you to preserve the sub-second time resolution of those events. This is the case for: fluent-plugin-cloudwatch-ingest.
time_key
By default, when inserting records in Logstash format, @timestamp
is dynamically created with the time at log ingestion. If you'd like to use a custom time, include an @timestamp
with your record.
{"@timestamp": "2014-04-07T000:00:00-00:00"}
You can specify an option time_key
(like the option described in tail Input Plugin) to replace @timestamp
key.
Suppose you have settings
logstash_format true
time_key vtm
Your input is:
{
"title": "developer",
"vtm": "2014-12-19T08:01:03Z"
}
The output will be
{
"title": "developer",
"@timestamp": "2014-12-19T08:01:03Z",
"vtm": "2014-12-19T08:01:03Z"
}
See time_key_exclude_timestamp
to avoid adding @timestamp
.
time_key_exclude_timestamp
time_key_exclude_timestamp false
By default, setting time_key
will copy the value to an additional field @timestamp
. When setting time_key_exclude_timestamp true
, no additional field will be added.
utc_index
utc_index true
By default, the records inserted into index logstash-YYMMDD
with UTC (Coordinated Universal Time). This option allows to use local time if you describe utc_index to false.
target_index_key
Tell this plugin to find the index name to write to in the record under this key in preference to other mechanisms. Key can be specified as path to nested record using dot ('.') as a separator.
If it is present in the record (and the value is non falsey) the value will be used as the index name to write to and then removed from the record before output; if it is not found then it will use logstash_format or index_name settings as configured.
Suppose you have the following settings
target_index_key @target_index
index_name fallback
If your input is:
{
"title": "developer",
"@timestamp": "2014-12-19T08:01:03Z",
"@target_index": "logstash-2014.12.19"
}
The output would be
{
"title": "developer",
"@timestamp": "2014-12-19T08:01:03Z",
}
and this record will be written to the specified index (logstash-2014.12.19
) rather than fallback
.
target_type_key
Similar to target_index_key
config, find the type name to write to in the record under this key (or nested record). If key not found in record - fallback to type_name
(default "fluentd").
template_name
The name of the template to define. If a template by the name given is already present, it will be left unchanged, unless template_overwrite is set, in which case the template will be updated.
This parameter along with template_file allow the plugin to behave similarly to Logstash (it installs a template at creation time) so that raw records are available. See https://github.com/uken/fluent-plugin-elasticsearch/issues/33.
template_file must also be specified.
template_file
The path to the file containing the template to install.
template_name must also be specified.
templates
Specify index templates in form of hash. Can contain multiple templates.
templates { "templane_name_1": "path_to_template_1_file", "templane_name_2": "path_to_template_2_file"}
If template_file
and template_name
are set, then this parameter will be ignored.
template_overwrite
Always update the template, even if it already exists.
template_overwrite true # defaults to false
One of template_file or templates must also be specified if this is set.
request_timeout
You can specify HTTP request timeout.
This is useful when Elasticsearch cannot return response for bulk request within the default of 5 seconds.
request_timeout 15s # defaults to 5s
reload_connections
You can tune how the elasticsearch-transport host reloading feature works. By default it will reload the host list from the server every 10,000th request to spread the load. This can be an issue if your Elasticsearch cluster is behind a Reverse Proxy, as Fluentd process may not have direct network access to the Elasticsearch nodes.
reload_connections false # defaults to true
reload_on_failure
Indicates that the elasticsearch-transport will try to reload the nodes addresses if there is a failure while making the request, this can be useful to quickly remove a dead node from the list of addresses.
reload_on_failure true # defaults to false
resurrect_after
You can set in the elasticsearch-transport how often dead connections from the elasticsearch-transport's pool will be resurrected.
resurrect_after 5s # defaults to 60s
include_tag_key, tag_key
include_tag_key true # defaults to false
tag_key tag # defaults to tag
This will add the Fluentd tag in the JSON record. For instance, if you have a config like this:
<match my.logs>
@type elasticsearch
include_tag_key true
tag_key _key
</match>
The record inserted into Elasticsearch would be
{"_key": "my.logs", "name": "Johnny Doeie"}
id_key
id_key request_id # use "request_id" field as a record id in ES
By default, all records inserted into Elasticsearch get a random _id. This option allows to use a field in the record as an identifier.
This following record {"name": "Johnny", "request_id": "87d89af7daffad6"}
will trigger the following Elasticsearch command
{ "index" : { "_index": "logstash-2013.01.01", "_type": "fluentd", "_id": "87d89af7daffad6" } }
{ "name": "Johnny", "request_id": "87d89af7daffad6" }
Fluentd re-emits events that failed to be indexed/ingested in Elasticsearch with a new and unique _id
value, this means that congested Elasticsearch clusters that reject events (due to command queue overflow, for example) will cause Fluentd to re-emit the event with a new _id
, however Elasticsearch may actually process both (or more) attempts (with some delay) and create duplicate events in the index (since each have a unique _id
value), one possible workaround is to use the fluent-plugin-genhashvalue plugin to generate a unique _hash
key in the record of each event, this _hash
record can be used as the id_key
to prevent Elasticsearch from creating deplicate events.
id_key _hash
Example configuration for fluent-plugin-genhashvalue (review the documentation of the plugin for more details)
<filter logs.**>
@type genhashvalue
keys sessionid,requestid
hash_type md5 # md5/sha1/sha256/sha512
base64_enc true
base91_enc false
set_key _hash
separator _
inc_time_as_key true
inc_tag_as_key true
</filter>
⚠️ In order to avoid hash-collisions and loosing data careful consideration is required when choosing the keys in the event record that should be used to calculate the hash
Using nested key
Nested key specifying syntax is also supported.
With the following configuration
id_key $.nested.request_id
and the following nested record
{"nested":{"name": "Johnny", "request_id": "87d89af7daffad6"}}
will trigger the following Elasticsearch command
{"index":{"_index":"fluentd","_type":"fluentd","_id":"87d89af7daffad6"}}
{"nested":{"name":"Johnny","request_id":"87d89af7daffad6"}}
⚠️ Note that Hash flattening may be conflict nested record feature.
parent_key
parent_key a_parent # use "a_parent" field value to set _parent in elasticsearch command
If your input is
{ "name": "Johnny", "a_parent": "my_parent" }
Elasticsearch command would be
{ "index" : { "_index": "****", "_type": "****", "_id": "****", "_parent": "my_parent" } }
{ "name": "Johnny", "a_parent": "my_parent" }
if parent_key
is not configed or the parent_key
is absent in input record, nothing will happen.
Using nested key
Nested key specifying syntax is also supported.
With the following configuration
parent_key $.nested.a_parent
and the following nested record
{"nested":{ "name": "Johnny", "a_parent": "my_parent" }}
will trigger the following Elasticsearch command
{"index":{"_index":"fluentd","_type":"fluentd","_parent":"my_parent"}}
{"nested":{"name":"Johnny","a_parent":"my_parent"}}
⚠️ Note that Hash flattening may be conflict nested record feature.
routing_key
Similar to parent_key
config, will add _routing
into elasticsearch command if routing_key
is set and the field does exist in input event.
remove_keys
parent_key a_parent
routing_key a_routing
remove_keys a_parent, a_routing # a_parent and a_routing fields won't be sent to elasticsearch
remove_keys_on_update
Remove keys on update will not update the configured keys in elasticsearch when a record is being updated. This setting only has any effect if the write operation is update or upsert.
If the write setting is upsert then these keys are only removed if the record is being updated, if the record does not exist (by id) then all of the keys are indexed.
remove_keys_on_update foo,bar
remove_keys_on_update_key
This setting allows remove_keys_on_update
to be configured with a key in each record, in much the same way as target_index_key
works. The configured key is removed before indexing in elasticsearch. If both remove_keys_on_update
and remove_keys_on_update_key
is present in the record then the keys in record are used, if the remove_keys_on_update_key
is not present then the value of remove_keys_on_update
is used as a fallback.
remove_keys_on_update_key keys_to_skip
retry_tag
This setting allows custom routing of messages in response to bulk request failures. The default behavior is to emit failed records using the same tag that was provided. When set to a value other then nil
, failed messages are emitted with the specified tag:
retry_tag 'retry_es'
NOTE: retry_tag
is optional. If you would rather use labels to reroute retries, add a label (e.g '@label @SOMELABEL') to your fluent elasticsearch plugin configuration. Retry records are, by default, submitted for retry to the ROOT label, which means records will flow through your fluentd pipeline from the beginning. This may nor may not be a problem if the pipeline is idempotent - that is - you can process a record again with no changes. Use tagging or labeling to ensure your retry records are not processed again by your fluentd processing pipeline.
write_operation
The write_operation can be any of:
Operation | Description |
---|---|
index (default) | new data is added while existing data (based on its id) is replaced (reindexed). |
create | adds new data - if the data already exists (based on its id), the op is skipped. |
update | updates existing data (based on its id). If no data is found, the op is skipped. |
upsert | known as merge or insert if the data does not exist, updates if the data exists (based on its id). |
Please note, id is required in create, update, and upsert scenario. Without id, the message will be dropped.
time_parse_error_tag
With logstash_format true
, elasticsearch plugin parses timestamp field for generating index name. If the record has invalid timestamp value, this plugin emits an error event to @ERROR
label with time_parse_error_tag
configured tag.
Default value is Fluent::ElasticsearchOutput::TimeParser.error
for backward compatibility. ::
separated tag is not good for tag routing because some plugins assume tag is separated by .
. We recommend to set this parameter like time_parse_error_tag es_plugin.output.time.error
. We will change default value to .
separated tag.
reconnect_on_error
Indicates that the plugin should reset connection on any error (reconnect on next send). By default it will reconnect only on "host unreachable exceptions". We recommended to set this true in the presence of elasticsearch shield.
reconnect_on_error true # defaults to false
with_transporter_log
This is debugging purpose option to enable to obtain transporter layer log. Default value is false
for backward compatibility.
We recommend to set this true if you start to debug this plugin.
with_transporter_log true
content_type
With content_type application/x-ndjson
, elasticsearch plugin adds application/x-ndjson
as Content-Type
in payload.
Default value is application/json
which is default Content-Type of Elasticsearch requests. If you will not use template, it recommends to set content_type application/x-ndjson
.
content_type application/x-ndjson
Client/host certificate options
Need to verify Elasticsearch's certificate? You can use the following parameter to specify a CA instead of using an environment variable.
ca_file /path/to/your/ca/cert
Does your Elasticsearch cluster want to verify client connections? You can specify the following parameters to use your client certificate, key, and key password for your connection.
client_cert /path/to/your/client/cert
client_key /path/to/your/private/key
client_key_pass password
If you want to configure SSL/TLS version, you can specify ssl_version parameter.
ssl_version TLSv1_2 # or [SSLv23, TLSv1, TLSv1_1]
Proxy Support
Starting with version 0.8.0, this gem uses excon, which supports proxy with environment variables - https://github.com/excon/excon#proxy-support
Buffer options
fluentd-plugin-elasticsearch
extends Fluentd's builtin Output plugin and use compat_parameters
plugin helper. It adds the following options:
buffer_type memory
flush_interval 60s
retry_limit 17
retry_wait 1.0
num_threads 1
The value for option buffer_chunk_limit
should not exceed value http.max_content_length
in your Elasticsearch setup (by default it is 100mb).
Note: If you use or evaluate Fluentd v0.14, you can use <buffer>
directive to specify buffer configuration, too. In more detail, please refer to the buffer configuration options for v0.14
Hash flattening
Elasticsearch will complain if you send object and concrete values to the same field. For example, you might have logs that look this, from different places:
{"people" => 100} {"people" => {"some" => "thing"}}
The second log line will be rejected by the Elasticsearch parser because objects and concrete values can't live in the same field. To combat this, you can enable hash flattening.
flatten_hashes true
flatten_hashes_separator _
This will produce elasticsearch output that looks like this: {"people_some" => "thing"}
Note that the flattener does not deal with arrays at this time.
Generate Hash ID
By default, the fluentd elasticsearch plugin does not emit records with a _id field, leaving it to Elasticsearch to generate a unique _id as the record is indexed. When an Elasticsearch cluster is congested and begins to take longer to respond than the configured request_timeout, the fluentd elasticsearch plugin will re-send the same bulk request. Since Elasticsearch can't tell its actually the same request, all documents in the request are indexed again resulting in duplicate data. In certain scenarios, this can result in essentially and infinite loop generating multiple copies of the same data.
The bundled elasticsearch_genid filter can generate a unique _hash key for each record, this key may be passed to the id_key parameter in the elasticsearch plugin to communicate to Elasticsearch the uniqueness of the requests so that duplicates will be rejected or simply replace the existing records. Here is a sample config:
<filter **>
@type elasticsearch_genid
hash_id_key _hash # storing generated hash id key (default is _hash)
</filter>
<match **>
@type elasticsearch
id_key _hash # specify same key name which is specified in hash_id_key
remove_keys _hash # Elasticsearch doesn't like keys that start with _
# other settings are ommitted.
</match>
Not seeing a config you need?
We try to keep the scope of this plugin small and not add too many configuration options. If you think an option would be useful to others, feel free to open an issue or contribute a Pull Request.
Alternatively, consider using fluent-plugin-forest. For example, to configure multiple tags to be sent to different Elasticsearch indices:
<match my.logs.*>
@type forest
subtype elasticsearch
remove_prefix my.logs
<template>
logstash_prefix ${tag}
# ...
</template>
</match>
And yet another option is described in Dynamic Configuration section.
Note: If you use or evaluate Fluentd v0.14, you can use builtin placeholders. In more detail, please refer to Placeholderssection.
Dynamic configuration
If you want configurations to depend on information in messages, you can use elasticsearch_dynamic
. This is an experimental variation of the Elasticsearch plugin allows configuration values to be specified in ways such as the below:
<match my.logs.*>
@type elasticsearch_dynamic
hosts ${record['host1']}:9200,${record['host2']}:9200
index_name my_index.${Time.at(time).getutc.strftime(@logstash_dateformat)}
logstash_prefix ${tag_parts[3]}
port ${9200+rand(4)}
index_name ${tag_parts[2]}-${Time.at(time).getutc.strftime(@logstash_dateformat)}
</match>
Please note, this uses Ruby's eval
for every message, so there are performance and security implications.
Placeholders
v0.14 placeholders can handle ${tag}
for tag, %Y%m%d
like strftime format, and custom record keys like as record["mykey"]
.
Note that custom chunk key is diffrent notations for record_reformer
and record_modifier
. They uses record["some_key"]
to specify placeholders, but this feature uses ${key1}
, ${key2}
notation. And tag, time, and some arbitrary keys must be included in buffer directive attributes.
They are used as below:
tag
<match my.logs>
@type elasticsearch
index_name elastic.${tag} #=> replaced with each event's tag. e.g.) elastic.test.tag
<buffer tag>
@type memory
</buffer>
# <snip>
</match>
time
<match my.logs>
@type elasticsearch
index_name elastic.%Y%m%d #=> e.g.) elastic.20170811
<buffer tag, time>
@type memory
timekey 3600
</buffer>
# <snip>
</match>
custom key
records = {key1: "value1", key2: "value2"}
<match my.logs>
@type elasticsearch
index_name elastic.${key1}.${key2} # => e.g.) elastic.value1.value2
<buffer tag, key1, key2>
@type memory
</buffer>
# <snip>
</match>
Multi workers
Since Fluentd v0.14, multi workers feature had been implemented to increase throughput with multiple processes. This feature allows Fluentd processes to use one or more CPUs. This feature will be enabled by the following system configuration:
<system>
workers N # where N is a natural number (N >= 1).
</system>
Contact
If you have a question, open an Issue.
Contributing
There are usually a few feature requests, tagged Easy, Normal and Hard. Feel free to work on any one of them.
Pull Requests are welcomed.
Running tests
Install dev dependencies:
$ gem install bundler
$ bundle install
$ bundle exec rake test