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: Hiroshi Hatake | @cosmo0920, Kentaro Hayashi | @kenhys

• Installation
• Usage
  • Index templates
• Configuration
  • host
  • port
  • cloud_id
  • cloud_auth
  • emit_error_for_missing_id
  • 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
  • suppress_type_name
  • target_index_key
  • target_type_key
  • target_index_affinity
  • template_name
  • template_file
  • template_overwrite
  • customize_template
  • rollover_index
  • index_date_pattern
  • deflector_alias
  • application_name
  • index_prefix
  • templates
  • max_retry_putting_template
  • fail_on_putting_template_retry_exceed
  • fail_on_detecting_es_version_retry_exceed
  • max_retry_get_es_version
  • 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
  • include_index_in_url
  • http_backend
  • http_backend_excon_nonblock
  • prefer_oj_serializer
  • compression_level
  • Client/host certificate options
  • Proxy Support
  • Buffer options
  • Hash flattening
  • Generate Hash ID
  • sniffer_class_name
  • selector_class_name
  • reload_after
  • validate_client_version
  • unrecoverable_error_types
  • verify_es version at startup
  • default_elasticsearch_version
  • custom_headers
  • api_key
  • Not seeing a config you need?
  • Dynamic configuration
  • Placeholders
  • Multi workers
  • log_es_400_reason
  • suppress_doc_wrap
  • ignore_exceptions
  • exception_backup
  • bulk_message_request_threshold
  • enable_ilm
  • ilm_policy_id
  • ilm_policy
  • ilm_policies
  • ilm_policy_overwrite
  • truncate_caches_interval
  • use_legacy_template
  • metadata section
    • include_chunk_id
    • chunk_id_key
• Configuration - Elasticsearch Input
• Configuration - Elasticsearch Filter GenID
• Configuration - Elasticsearch Output Data Stream
• Elasticsearch permissions
• Troubleshooting
• Contact
• Contributing
• Running tests

NOTE: Since fluent-plugin-elasticsearch 5.3.0, it requires faraday 2.0 or later.

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.

NOTE: Using Index Lifecycle management(ILM) feature needs to install elasticsearch-xpack gem v7.4.0 or later.

$ gem install fluent-plugin-elasticsearch

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>

NOTE: type_name parameter will be used fixed _doc value for Elasticsearch 7.

NOTE: type_name parameter will make no effect for Elasticsearch 8.

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.

host user-custom-host.domain # default localhost

You can specify Elasticsearch host by this parameter.

Note: Since v3.3.2, host parameter supports builtin placeholders. If you want to send events dynamically into different hosts at runtime with elasticsearch_dynamic output plugin, please consider to switch to use plain elasticsearch output plugin. In more detail for builtin placeholders, please refer to Placeholders section.

To use IPv6 address on host parameter, you can use the following styles:

To use string style, you must quote IPv6 address due to prevent to be interpreted as JSON:

host "[2404:7a80:d440:3000:192a:a292:bd7f:ca10]"

You can also specify raw IPv6 address. This will be handled as [specified IPv6 address]:

host 2404:7a80:d440:3000:192a:a292:bd7f:ca10

port 9201 # defaults to 9200

You can specify Elasticsearch port by this parameter.

cloud_id test-dep:ZXVyb3BlLXdlc3QxLmdjcC5jbG91ZC5lcy5pbyRiYZTA1Ng==

You can specify Elasticsearch cloud_id by this parameter.

If you specify cloud_id option then cloud_auth option is required. If you specify cloud_id option, host, port, user and password options are ignored.

cloud_auth 'elastic:slkjdaooewkd87iqQ2O8EQYV'

You can specify Elasticsearch cloud_auth by this parameter.

emit_error_for_missing_id true

When write_operation is configured to anything other then index, setting this value to true will cause the plugin to emit_error_event of any records which do not include an _id field. The default (false) behavior is to silently drop the records.

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.

If you specify hosts option, host and port options are ignored.

host user-custom-host.domain # ignored
port 9200                    # ignored
hosts host1:port1,host2:port2,host3:port3

If you specify hosts option without port, port option is used.

port 9200
hosts host1:port1,host2:port2,host3 # port3 is 9200

Note: If you will use scheme https, do not include "https://" in your hosts ie. host "https://domain", this will cause ES cluster to be unreachable and you will receive an error "Can not reach Elasticsearch cluster"

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.

When you want to specify IPv6 addresses, you must specify schema together:

hosts http://[2404:7a80:d440:3000:de:7311:6329:2e6c]:port1,http://[2404:7a80:d440:3000:de:7311:6329:1e6c]:port2,http://[2404:7a80:d440:3000:de:6311:6329:2e6c]:port3

If you don't specify hosts with schema together, Elasticsearch plugin complains Invalid URI for them.

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 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}-#{formatted_date}

⚠️ Setting this option to true will ignore the index_name setting. The default index name prefix is logstash-.

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 mylogs # defaults to "logstash"

logstash_prefix_separator _ # defaults to "-"

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"

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

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 improvement 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

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.

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 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 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.

In Elasticsearch 7.x, Elasticsearch cluster complains the following types removal warnings:

{"type": "deprecation", "timestamp": "2020-07-03T08:02:20,830Z", "level": "WARN", "component": "o.e.d.a.b.BulkRequestParser", "cluster.name": "docker-cluster", "node.name": "70dd5c6b94c3", "message": "[types removal] Specifying types in bulk requests is deprecated.", "cluster.uuid": "NoJJmtzfTtSzSMv0peG8Wg", "node.id": "VQ-PteHmTVam2Pnbg7xWHw"  }

This can be suppressed with:

suppress_type_name true

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 falsy) 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.

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").

Enable plugin to dynamically select logstash time based target index in update/upsert operations based on already indexed data rather than current time of indexing.

target_index_affinity true # defaults to false

By default plugin writes data of logstash format index based on current time. For example daily based index after mignight data is written to newly created index. This is normally ok when data is coming from single source and not updated after indexing.

But if you have a use case where data is also updated after indexing and id_key is used to identify the document uniquely for updating. Logstash format is wanted to be used for easy data managing and retention. Updates are done right after indexing to complete the data (all data not available from single source) and no updates are done anymore later point on time. In this case problem happends at index rotation time where write to 2 indexes with same id_key value may happen.

This setting will search existing data by using elastic search's id query using id_key value (with logstash_prefix and logstash_prefix_separator index pattarn e.g. logstash-*). The index of found data is used for update/upsert. When no data is found, data is written to current logstash index as normally.

This setting requires following other settings:

logstash_format true
id_key myId  # Some field on your data to identify the data uniquely
write_operation upsert  # upsert or update

Suppose you have the following situation where you have 2 different match to consume data from 2 different Kafka topics independently but close in time with each other (order not known).

  <match data1>
    @type elasticsearch
    ...
    id_key myId
    write_operation upsert
    logstash_format true
    logstash_dateformat %Y.%m.%d
    logstash_prefix myindexprefix
    target_index_affinity true
    ...

  <match data2>
    @type elasticsearch
    ...
    id_key myId
    write_operation upsert
    logstash_format true
    logstash_dateformat %Y.%m.%d
    logstash_prefix myindexprefix
    target_index_affinity true
    ...

If your first (data1) input is:

{
  "myId": "myuniqueId1",
  "datafield1": "some value",
}

and your second (data2) input is:

{
  "myId": "myuniqueId1",
  "datafield99": "some important data from other source tightly related to id myuniqueId1 and wanted to be in same document.",
}

Date today is 10.05.2021 so data is written to index myindexprefix-2021.05.10 when both data1 and data2 is consumed during today. But when we are close to index rotation and data1 is consumed and indexed at 2021-05-10T23:59:55.59707672Z and data2 is consumed a bit later at 2021-05-11T00:00:58.222079Z i.e. logstash index has been rotated and normally data2 would have been written to index myindexprefix-2021.05.11. But with target_index_affinity setting as value true, data2 is now written to index myindexprefix-2021.05.10 into same document with data1 as wanted and duplicated document is avoided.

The name of the index template to create on fluentd startup. 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 #33.

template_file must also be specified.

The path to the file containing the template to install.

template_name must also be specified.

Specify index templates (to be created on startup) in the form of a hash (accepts JSON dict). Can contain multiple templates.

templates { "template_name_1": "path_to_template_1_file", "template_name_2": "path_to_template_2_file"}

Note: Before ES plugin v4.1.2, if template_file and template_name are set, then this parameter will be ignored. In 4.1.3 or later, template_file and template_name can work with templates.

Specify the string and its value to be replaced in form of hash. Can contain multiple key value pair that would be replaced in the specified template_file. This setting only creates template and to add rollover index please check the rollover_index configuration.

customize_template {"string_1": "subs_value_1", "string_2": "subs_value_2"}

If template_file and template_name are set, then this parameter will be in effect otherwise ignored.

Specify this as true when an index with rollover capability needs to be created. It creates an index with the format <logstash-default-{now/d}-000001> where logstash denotes the index_prefix and default denotes the application_name which can be set. 'deflector_alias' is a required field for rollover_index set to true. 'index_prefix' and 'application_name' are optional and defaults to logstash and default respectively.

rollover_index true # defaults to false

If customize_template is set, then this parameter will be in effect otherwise ignored.

Specify this to override the index date pattern for creating a rollover index. The default is to use "now/d", for example: <logstash-default-{now/d}-000001>. Overriding this changes the rollover time period. Setting "now/w{xxxx.ww}" would create weekly rollover indexes instead of daily.

This setting only takes effect when combined with the enable_ilm setting.

index_date_pattern "now/w{xxxx.ww}" # defaults to "now/d"

If empty string("") is specified in index_date_pattern, index date pattern is not used. Elasticsearch plugin just creates <target_index-application_name-000001> rollover index instead of <target_index-application_name-{index_date_pattern}-000001>.

If customize_template is set, then this parameter will be in effect otherwise ignored.

Specify the deflector alias which would be assigned to the rollover index created. This is useful in case of using the Elasticsearch rollover API

deflector_alias test-current

If rollover_index is set, then this parameter will be in effect otherwise ignored.

NOTE: Since 4.1.1, deflector_alias is prohibited to use with enable_ilm.

This parameter is marked as obsoleted. Consider to use index_name for specify ILM target index when not using with logstash_format. When specifying logstash_format as true, consider to use logstash_prefix to specify ILM target index prefix.

Specify the application name for the rollover index to be created.

application_name default # defaults to "default"

If enable_ilm is set, then this parameter will be in effect otherwise ignored.

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.

You can specify times of retry putting template.

This is useful when Elasticsearch plugin cannot connect Elasticsearch to put template. Usually, booting up clustered Elasticsearch containers are much slower than launching Fluentd container.

max_retry_putting_template 15 # defaults to 10

Indicates whether to fail when max_retry_putting_template is exceeded. If you have multiple output plugin, you could use this property to do not fail on fluentd statup.

fail_on_putting_template_retry_exceed false # defaults to true

Indicates whether to fail when max_retry_get_es_version is exceeded. If you want to use fallback mechanism for obtaining ELasticsearch version, you could use this property to do not fail on fluentd statup.

fail_on_detecting_es_version_retry_exceed false

And the following parameters should be working with:

verify_es_version_at_startup true
max_retry_get_es_version 2 # greater than 0.
default_elasticsearch_version 7 # This version is used when occurring fallback.

You can specify times of retry obtaining Elasticsearch version.

This is useful when Elasticsearch plugin cannot connect Elasticsearch to obtain Elasticsearch version. Usually, booting up clustered Elasticsearch containers are much slower than launching Fluentd container.

max_retry_get_es_version 17 # defaults to 15

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

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

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

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 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 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 duplicate events.

id_key _hash

Example configuration for fluent-plugin-genhashvalue (review the documentation of the plugin for more details)

<filter logs.**>
  @type genhashvalue
  keys session_id,request_id
  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

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 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.

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.

Similar to parent_key config, will add _routing into elasticsearch command if routing_key is set and the field does exist in input event.

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 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

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

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.

The write_operation can be any of:

Please note, id is required in create, update, and upsert scenario. Without id, the message will be dropped.

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.

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

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

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

With this option set to true, Fluentd manifests the index name in the request URL (rather than in the request body). You can use this option to enforce an URL-based access control.

include_index_in_url true

With http_backend typhoeus, elasticsearch plugin uses typhoeus faraday http backend. Typhoeus can handle HTTP keepalive.

Default value is excon which is default http_backend of elasticsearch plugin.

http_backend typhoeus

With http_backend_excon_nonblock false, elasticsearch plugin use excon with nonblock=false. If you use elasticsearch plugin with jRuby for https, you may need to consider to set false to avoid follwoing problems.

• excon/excon#106
• jruby/jruby-ossl#19

But for all other case, it strongly reccomend to set true to avoid process hangin problem reported in #732

Default value is true.

http_backend_excon_nonblock false

You can add gzip compression of output data. In this case default_compression, best_compression or best speed option should be chosen. By default there is no compression, default value for this option is no_compression

compression_level best_compression

With default behavior, Elasticsearch client uses Yajl as JSON encoder/decoder. Oj is the alternative high performance JSON encoder/decoder. When this parameter sets as true, Elasticsearch client uses Oj as JSON encoder/decoder.

Default value is false.

prefer_oj_serializer true

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]

⚠️ If SSL/TLS enabled, it might have to be required to set ssl_version.

In Elasticsearch plugin v4.0.2 with Ruby 2.5 or later combination, Elasticsearch plugin also support ssl_max_version and ssl_min_version.

ssl_max_version TLSv1_3
ssl_min_version TLSv1_2

Elasticsearch plugin will use TLSv1.2 as minimum ssl version and TLSv1.3 as maximum ssl version on transportation with TLS. Note that when they are used in Elastissearch plugin configuration, ssl_version is not used to set up TLS version.

If they are not specified in the Elasticsearch plugin configuration, ssl_max_version and ssl_min_version is set up with:

In Elasticsearch plugin v4.0.8 or later with Ruby 2.5 or later environment, ssl_max_version should be TLSv1_3 and ssl_min_version should be TLSv1_2.

From Elasticsearch plugin v4.0.4 to v4.0.7 with Ruby 2.5 or later environment, the value of ssl_version will be used in ssl_max_version and ssl_min_version.

Starting with version 0.8.0, this gem uses excon, which supports proxy with environment variables - https://github.com/excon/excon#proxy-support

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

Note: If you use disable_retry_limit in v0.12 or retry_forever in v0.14 or later, please be careful to consume memory inexhaustibly.

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.

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 omitted.
</match>

The default Sniffer used by the Elasticsearch::Transport class works well when Fluentd has a direct connection to all of the Elasticsearch servers and can make effective use of the _nodes API. This doesn't work well when Fluentd must connect through a load balancer or proxy. The parameter sniffer_class_name gives you the ability to provide your own Sniffer class to implement whatever connection reload logic you require. In addition, there is a new Fluent::Plugin::ElasticsearchSimpleSniffer class which reuses the hosts given in the configuration, which is typically the hostname of the load balancer or proxy. For example, a configuration like this would cause connections to logging-es to reload every 100 operations:

host logging-es
port 9200
reload_connections true
sniffer_class_name Fluent::Plugin::ElasticsearchSimpleSniffer
reload_after 100

The included sniffer class is not required out_elasticsearch. You should tell Fluentd where the sniffer class exists.

If you use td-agent, you must put the following lines into TD_AGENT_DEFAULT file:

sniffer=$(td-agent-gem contents fluent-plugin-elasticsearch|grep elasticsearch_simple_sniffer.rb)
TD_AGENT_OPTIONS="--use-v1-config -r $sniffer"

If you use Fluentd directly, you must pass the following lines as Fluentd command line option:

sniffer=$(td-agent-gem contents fluent-plugin-elasticsearch|grep elasticsearch_simple_sniffer.rb)
$ fluentd -r $sniffer [AND YOUR OTHER OPTIONS]

The default selector used by the Elasticsearch::Transport class works well when Fluentd should behave round robin and random selector cases. This doesn't work well when Fluentd should behave fallbacking from exhausted ES cluster to normal ES cluster. The parameter selector_class_name gives you the ability to provide your own Selector class to implement whatever selection nodes logic you require.

The below configuration is using plugin built-in ElasticseatchFallbackSelector:

hosts exhausted-host:9201,normal-host:9200
selector_class_name "Fluent::Plugin::ElasticseatchFallbackSelector"

The included selector class is required in out_elasticsearch by default. But, your custom selector class is not required in out_elasticsearch. You should tell Fluentd where the selector class exists.

If you use td-agent, you must put the following lines into TD_AGENT_DEFAULT file:

selector=/path/to/your_awesome_selector.rb
TD_AGENT_OPTIONS="--use-v1-config -r $selector"

If you use Fluentd directly, you must pass the following lines as Fluentd command line option:

selector=/path/to/your_awesome_selector.rb
$ fluentd -r $selector [AND YOUR OTHER OPTIONS]

When reload_connections true, this is the integer number of operations after which the plugin will reload the connections. The default value is 10000.

When you use mismatched Elasticsearch server and client libraries, fluent-plugin-elasticsearch cannot send data into Elasticsearch. The default value is false.

validate_client_version true

Default unrecoverable_error_types parameter is set up strictly. Because es_rejected_execution_exception is caused by exceeding Elasticsearch's thread pool capacity. Advanced users can increase its capacity, but normal users should follow default behavior.

If you want to increase it and forcibly retrying bulk request, please consider to change unrecoverable_error_types parameter from default value.

Change default value of thread_pool.write.queue_size in elasticsearch.yml: e.g.)

thread_pool.write.queue_size: 1000

Then, remove es_rejected_execution_exception from unrecoverable_error_types parameter:

unrecoverable_error_types ["out_of_memory_error"]

Because Elasticsearch plugin should change behavior each of Elasticsearch major versions.

For example, Elasticsearch 6 starts to prohibit multiple type_names in one index, and Elasticsearch 7 will handle only _doc type_name in index.

If you want to disable to verify Elasticsearch version at start up, set it as false.

When using the following configuration, ES plugin intends to communicate into Elasticsearch 6.

verify_es_version_at_startup false
default_elasticsearch_version 6

The default value is true.

This parameter changes that ES plugin assumes default Elasticsearch version. The default value is 5.

This parameter adds additional headers to request. The default value is {}.

custom_headers {"token":"secret"}

This parameter adds authentication header. The default value is nil.

api_key "ElasticsearchAPIKEY"

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 Placeholders section.

NOTE: out_elasticsearch_dynamic will be planned to be marked as deprecated. Please don't use the new Fluentd configuration. This plugin is maintained for backward compatibility.

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.

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 different 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:

<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>

<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>

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>

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>

By default, the error logger won't record the reason for a 400 error from the Elasticsearch API unless you set log_level to debug. However, this results in a lot of log spam, which isn't desirable if all you want is the 400 error reasons. You can set this true to capture the 400 error reasons without all the other debug logs.

Default value is false.

By default, record body is wrapped by 'doc'. This behavior can not handle update script requests. You can set this to suppress doc wrapping and allow record body to be untouched.

Default value is false.

A list of exception that will be ignored - when the exception occurs the chunk will be discarded and the buffer retry mechanism won't be called. It is possible also to specify classes at higher level in the hierarchy. For example

ignore_exceptions ["Elasticsearch::Transport::Transport::ServerError"]

will match all subclasses of ServerError - Elasticsearch::Transport::Transport::Errors::BadRequest, Elasticsearch::Transport::Transport::Errors::ServiceUnavailable, etc.

Default value is empty list (no exception is ignored).

Indicates whether to backup chunk when ignore exception occurs.

Default value is true.

Configure bulk_message request splitting threshold size.

Default value is -1(unlimited).

If you specify this size as negative number, bulk_message request splitting feature will be disabled.

Enable Index Lifecycle Management (ILM).

Default value is false.

NOTE: This parameter requests to install elasticsearch-xpack gem.

Specify ILM policy id.

Default value is logstash-policy.

NOTE: This parameter requests to install elasticsearch-xpack gem.

Specify ILM policy contents as Hash.

Default value is {}.

NOTE: This parameter requests to install elasticsearch-xpack gem.

A hash in the format {"ilm_policy_id1":{ <ILM policy 1 hash> }, "ilm_policy_id2": { <ILM policy 2 hash> }}.

Default value is {}.

NOTE: This parameter requests to install elasticsearch-xpack gem.

Specify whether overwriting ilm policy or not.

Default value is false.

NOTE: This parameter requests to install elasticsearch-xpack gem.

Specify truncating caches interval.

If it is set, timer for clearing alias_indexes and template_names caches will be launched and executed.

Default value is nil.

Use legacy template or not.

For Elasticsearch 7.8 or later, users can specify this parameter as false if their template_file contains a composable index template.

For Elasticsearch 7.7 or older, users should specify this parameter as true.

Composable template documentation is Put Index Template API | Elasticsearch Reference and legacy template documentation is Index Templates | Elasticsearch Reference.

Please confirm that whether the using Elasticsearch cluster(s) support the composable template feature or not when turn on the brand new feature with this parameter.

Users can specify whether including chunk_id information into records or not:

<match your.awesome.routing.tag>
  @type elasticsearch
  # Other configurations.
  <metadata>
    include_chunk_id true
    # chunk_id_key chunk_id # Default value is "chunk_id".
  </metadata>
</match>

Whether including chunk_id for not. Default value is false.

<match your.awesome.routing.tag>
  @type elasticsearch
  # Other configurations.
  <metadata>
    include_chunk_id true
  </metadata>
</match>

Specify chunk_id_key to store chunk_id information into records. Default value is chunk_id.

<match your.awesome.routing.tag>
  @type elasticsearch
  # Other configurations.
  <metadata>
    include_chunk_id
    chunk_id_key chunk_hex
  </metadata>
</match>

See Elasticsearch Input plugin document

See Elasticsearch Filter GenID document

If the target Elasticsearch requires authentication, a user holding the necessary permissions needs to be provided.

The set of required permissions are the following:

  "cluster": ["manage_index_templates", "monitor", "manage_ilm"],
  "indices": [
    {
      "names": [ "*" ],
      "privileges": ["write","create","delete","create_index","manage","manage_ilm"]
    }
  ]

These permissions can be narrowed down by:

• Setting a more specific pattern for indices under the names field
• Removing the manage_index_templates cluster permission when not using the feature within your plugin configuration
• Removing the manage_ilm cluster permission and the manage and manage_ilm indices privileges when not using ilm features in the plugin configuration

The list of privileges along with their description can be found in security privileges.

Since Elasticsearch 7.9, Data Streams was introduced.

You can enable this feature by specifying @type elasticsearch_data_stream.

@type elasticsearch_data_stream
data_stream_name test

When @type elasticsearch_data_stream is used, unless specified with data_stream_ilm_name and data_stream_template_name or data_stream_ilm_policy, ILM default policy is set to the specified data stream. Then, the matching index template is also created automatically.

You can specify Elasticsearch data stream name by this parameter. This parameter is mandatory for elasticsearch_data_stream.

You can specify an existing matching index template for the data stream. If not present, it creates a new matching index template.

Default value is data_stream_name.

You can specify the name of an existing ILM policy, which will be applied to the data stream. If not present, it creates a new ILM default policy (unless data_stream_template_name is defined, in that case the ILM will be set to the one specified in the matching index template).

Default value is data_stream_name.

There are some limitations about naming rule.

In more detail, please refer to the Path parameters.

You can specify the ILM policy contents as hash. If not present, it will apply the ILM default policy.

NOTE: This parameter requests to install elasticsearch-xpack gem.

Specify whether the data stream ILM policy should be overwritten.

Default value is false.

NOTE: This parameter requests to install elasticsearch-xpack gem.

Specify whether index patterns should include a wildcard (*) when creating an index template. This is particularly useful to prevent errors in scenarios where index templates are generated automatically, and multiple services with distinct suffixes are in use.

Default value is true.

Consider the following JSON error response when index patterns clash due to wildcard usage:

{
  "error": {
    "root_cause": [
      {
        "type": "illegal_argument_exception",
        "reason": "index template [eks-kube-apiserver] has index patterns [eks-kube-apiserver*] matching patterns from existing templates [eks-kube-apiserver-audit] with patterns (eks-kube-apiserver-audit => [eks-kube-apiserver-audit*]) that have the same priority [0], multiple index templates may not match during index creation, please use a different priority"
      }
    ],
    "type": "illegal_argument_exception",
    "reason": "index template [eks-kube-apiserver] has index patterns [eks-kube-apiserver*] matching patterns from existing templates [eks-kube-apiserver-audit] with patterns (eks-kube-apiserver-audit => [eks-kube-apiserver-audit*]) that have the same priority [0], multiple index templates may not match during index creation, please use a different priority"
  },
  "status": 400
}

When data_stream_template_use_index_patterns_wildcard is set to true (default):

data_stream_name: foo
data_stream_template_use_index_patterns_wildcard: true

In this case, the resulting index patterns will be: ["foo*"]

When data_stream_template_use_index_patterns_wildcard is set to false:

data_stream_name: foo
data_stream_template_use_index_patterns_wildcard: false

The resulting index patterns will be: ["foo"]

See Troubleshooting document

If you have a question, open an Issue.

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.

Becore send a pull request or report an issue, please read the contribution guideline.

Install dev dependencies:

$ gem install bundler
$ bundle install
$ bundle exec rake test
# To just run the test you are working on:
$ bundle exec rake test TEST=test/plugin/test_out_elasticsearch.rb TESTOPTS='--verbose --name=test_custom_template_with_rollover_index_create_and_custom_ilm'