Beats Role

This role provides a generic means of installing Elastic supported beats using Ansible. Currently this includes:

• Filebeat
• MetricBeat (TopBeat in 1.x)
• Packetbeat

Requirements

This role requires:

• Ansible version > 2.0
• Beats version >= 1.x
• Target machines require access to an external repo, or means

The following OS are currently actively tested using kitchen:

• Centos 6 & 7
• Debian 8 & 9
• Ubuntu 14.04, 16.04 & 18.04

The above list is subject to change.

Role Variables

Supported variables are as follows:

• beat (MANDATORY): Beat product. Supported values are: "filebeat", "metricbeat" & "packetbeat".
• beat_conf (MANDATORY): Beat Configuration. Should be defined as a map (see Example Playbook)
• beats_version (Defaults to 7.0.0): Beats version.
• version_lock (Defaults to false): Locks the installed version if set to true, thus preventing other processes from updating. This will not impact the roles ability to update the beat on subsequent runs (it unlocks and re-locks if required).
• use_repository (Defaults to true): Use elastic repo for yum or apt if true. If false, a custom custom_package_url must be provided.
• start_service (Defaults to true): service will be started if true, false otherwise.
• restart_on_change (Defaults to true): Changes to configuration or installed versions, will result in a restart if true.
• daemon_args (Applicable to version 1.x of beats): Allows run time params to be passed to beats.
• logging_conf (Defaults to {"files":{"rotateeverybytes":10485760}}): Logging configuration. Should be defined as a map (see Example Playbook). Map is serialized into logging section of beat config.
• shipper_conf (Applicable to version 1.x of beats): Shipper configuration. Should be defined as a map (see Example Playbook). Map is serialized into shipper section of beat config.
• output_conf (*Defaults to {"elasticsearch":{"hosts":["localhost:9200"]}}): Output configuration. Should be defined as a map (see Example Playbook). Map is serialized into output section of beat config.
• beats_pid_dir (Defaults to /var/run): Location of beats pid file.
• beats_conf_dir (Defaults to /etc/{beat}): Location of conf directory for beats configuration file.

Dependencies

• Ansible version > 2.0
• Beats version >= 6.x

Example Playbook

Example playbook is provided below. This installs Packetbeat and illustrates the need for configuration sections to be specified as maps.

- name: Example playbook for installing packetbeat
  hosts: localhost
  roles:
    - { role: beats, beat: "packetbeat",
        beat_conf: {
          "interfaces": {"device":"any"},
          "protocols": {
            "dns": {
              "ports": [53],
              "include_authorities":true
            },
            "http": {
              "ports": [80, 8080, 8000, 5000, 8002]
            },
            "memcache": {
              "ports": [11211]
            },
            "mysql": {
              "ports": [3306]
            },
            "pgsql": {
              "ports": [5432]
            },
            "redis": {
              "ports": [6379]
            },
            "thrift": {
              "ports": [9090]
            },
            "mongodb": {
              "ports": [27017]
            }
          }
        },
        output_conf : {
          "elasticsearch": {
            "hosts": ["localhost:9200"]
          }
        }
    }
  vars:
    use_repository: "true"

Testing

This playbook uses Kitchen for CI and local testing.

Requirements

• Ruby
• Bundler
• Docker
• Make

Running the tests

To converge an Ubuntu 18.04 host

$ make converge

To run the tests

$ make verify

To list all of the different test suits

$ make list

The default test suite is Ubuntu 18.04. If you want to test another suite you can override this with the PATTERN variable

$ make converge PATTERN=standard-centos-7

The PATTERN is a kitchen pattern which can match multiple suites. To run all tests for CentOS

$ make converge PATTERN=centos-7

When you are finished testing you can clean up everything with

$ make destroy-all

License

Apache 2.0

Limitations

Multiple instances of the same beat cannot be installed on the same target server.

Author Information

Dale McDiarmid For further assistance, outside of issues, please use discuss.elastic.co.

Community Contributions always appreciated and welcome! Please ensure all contributions include tests as appropriate.