Elasticsearch API

Cribl Stream supports receiving data over HTTP/S using the Elasticsearch Bulk API.

Type: Push | TLS Support: YES | Event Breaker Support: No

This Source supports gzip-compressed inbound data when the Content‑Encoding: gzip connection header is set.

For examples of receiving data from popular senders via this API, see Configuring Elastic Beats below.

Configuring Cribl Stream to Receive Elasticsearch Bulk API Data over HTTP(S)​

From the top nav, click Manage, then select a Worker Group to configure. Next, you have two options:

To configure via the graphical QuickConnect UI, click Routing > QuickConnect (Stream) or Collect (Edge). Next, click Add Source at left. From the resulting drawer’s tiles, select [Push >] Elasticsearch API. Next, click either Add Destination or (if displayed) Select Existing. The resulting drawer will provide the options below.

Or, to configure via the Routing UI, click Data > Sources (Stream) or More > Sources (Edge). From the resulting page’s tiles or left nav, select [Push >] Elasticsearch API. Next, click New Source to open a New Source modal that provides the options below.

Cribl Stream ships with an Elasticsearch API Source preconfigured to listen on Port 9200. You can clone or directly modify this Source to further configure it, and then enable it.

General Settings​

Input ID: Enter a unique name to identify this Elasticsearch Source definition. If you clone this Source, Cribl Stream will add -CLONE to the original Input ID.

Address: Enter the hostname/IP on which to listen for Elasticsearch data. (E.g., localhost or 0.0.0.0.)

Port: Enter the port number.

Elasticsearch API endpoint (for Bulk API): Absolute path on which to listen for Elasticsearch API requests. Defaults to /. Cribl Stream automatically appends _bulk, so (e.g.) /myPath becomes /myPath/_bulk. Requests could then be made to either /myPath/_bulk or /myPath/<myIndexName>/_bulk. Other entries are faked as success.

Optional Settings​

Tags: Optionally, add tags that you can use to filter and group Sources in Cribl Stream’s Manage Sources page. These tags aren’t added to processed events. Use a tab or hard return between (arbitrary) tag names.

Authentication​

In the Authentication type drop-down, select one of the following options:

  • None: Don’t use authentication.

  • Basic: Displays Username and Password fields for you to enter HTTP Basic authentication credentials. Click Generate if you need a new password.

  • Basic (credentials secret): Provide username and password credentials referenced by a secret. Select a stored text secret in the resulting Credentials secret drop-down, or click Create to configure a new secret.

  • Auth tokens: Use HTTP token authentication. Click Add Token and, in the resulting Token field, enter the bearer token that must be included in the HTTP authorization header. Click Generate if you need a new token. Click Add Token to display additional rows to specify more tokens.

See also Periodic Logging for information on how auth tokens affect product logging.

TLS Settings (Server Side)​

Enabled defaults to No. When toggled to Yes:

Certificate name: Name of the predefined certificate.

Private key path: Server path containing the private key (in PEM format) to use. Path can reference $ENV_VARS.

Passphrase: Passphrase to use to decrypt private key.

Certificate path: Server path containing certificates (in PEM format) to use. Path can reference $ENV_VARS.

CA certificate path: Server path containing CA certificates (in PEM format) to use. Path can reference $ENV_VARS.

Authenticate client (mutual auth): Require clients to present their certificates. Used to perform mutual authentication using SSL certs. Defaults to No. When toggled to Yes:

  • Validate client certs: Reject certificates that are not authorized by a CA in the CA certificate path, or by another trusted CA (e.g., the system’s CA). Defaults to Yes.

  • Common Name: Regex that a peer certificate’s subject attribute must match in order to connect. Defaults to .*. Matches on the substring after CN=. As needed, escape regex tokens to match literal characters. (For example, to match the subject CN=worker.cribl.local, you would enter: worker\.cribl\.local.) If the subject attribute contains Subject Alternative Name (SAN) entries, the Source will check the regex against all of those but ignore the Common Name (CN) entry (if any). If the certificate has no SAN extension, the Source will check the regex against the single name in the CN.

Minimum TLS version: Optionally, select the minimum TLS version to accept from connections.

Maximum TLS version: Optionally, select the maximum TLS version to accept from connections.

Persistent Queue Settings​

In this section, you can optionally specify persistent queue storage, using the following controls. This will buffer and preserve incoming events when a downstream Destination is down, or exhibiting backpressure.

On Cribl-managed Cribl.Cloud Workers (with an Enterprise plan), this tab exposes only the Enable Persistent Queue toggle. If enabled, PQ is automatically configured in Always On mode, with a maximum queue size of 1 GB disk space allocated per PQ‑enabled Source, per Worker Process.

The 1 GB limit is on uncompressed inbound data, and no compression is applied to the queue. This limit is not configurable. For configurable queue size, compression, mode, and other options below, use a hybrid Group.

Enable Persistent Queue: Defaults to No. When toggled to Yes:

Mode: Select a condition for engaging persistent queues.

  • Always On: This default option will always write events to the persistent queue, before forwarding them to Cribl Stream’s data processing engine.
  • Smart: This option will engage PQ only when the Source detects backpressure from Cribl Stream’s data processing engine.

Max buffer size: The maximum number of events to hold in memory before reporting backpressure to the sender and writing the queue to disk. Defaults to 1000. (This buffer is per connection, not just per Worker Process – and this can dramatically expand memory usage.)

Commit frequency: The number of events to send downstream before committing that Stream has read them. Defaults to 42.

Max file size: The maximum data volume to store in each queue file before closing it and (optionally) applying the configured Compression. Enter a numeral with units of KB, MB, etc. If not specified, Cribl Stream applies the default 1 MB.

Max queue size: The maximum amount of disk space that the queue is allowed to consume on each Worker Process. Once this limit is reached, this Source will stop queueing data and block incoming data. Required, and defaults to 5 GB. Accepts positive numbers with units of KB, MB, GB, etc. Can be set as high as 1 TB, unless you’ve configured a different Max PQ size per Worker Process in Group Settings.

Queue file path: The location for the persistent queue files. Defaults to $CRIBL_HOME/state/queues. To this field’s specified path, Cribl Stream will append /<worker-id>/inputs/<input-id>.

Compression: Optional codec to compress the persisted data after a file is closed. Defaults to None; Gzip is also available.

In Cribl Stream 4.1 and later, Source-side PQ’s default Mode is Always on, to best ensure events’ delivery. For details on optimizing this selection, see Always On versus Smart Mode.

You can optimize Workers’ startup connections and CPU load at Group Settings > Worker Processes.

Processing Settings​

Fields​

In this section, you can add Fields to each event using Eval-like functionality.

Name: Field name.

Value: JavaScript expression to compute field’s value, enclosed in quotes or backticks. (Can evaluate to a constant.)

Pre-Processing​

In this section’s Pipeline drop-down list, you can select a single existing Pipeline to process data from this input before the data is sent through the Routes.

Advanced Settings​

Enable proxy protocol: Toggle to Yes if the connection is proxied by a device that supports Proxy Protocol v1 or v2. This setting affects how the Source handles the __srcIpPort field.

Capture request headers: Toggle this to Yes to add request headers to events, in the __headers field.

Max active requests: Maximum number of active requests allowed for this Source, per Worker Process. Defaults to 256. Enter 0 for unlimited.

Activity log sample rate: Determines how often request activity is logged at the info level. The default 100 value logs every 100th value; a 1 value would log every request; a 10 value would log every 10th request; etc.

Max requests per socket: The maximum number of requests Cribl Stream should allow on one socket before instructing the client to close the connection. Defaults to 0 (unlimited). See Balancing Connection Reuse Against Request Distribution below.

Socket timeout (seconds): How long Cribl Stream should wait before assuming that an inactive socket has timed out. The default 0 value means wait forever.

Request timeout (seconds): How long to wait for an incoming request to complete before aborting it. The default 0 value means wait indefinitely.

Keep-alive timeout (seconds): After the last response is sent, Cribl Stream will wait this long for additional data before closing the socket connection. Defaults to 5 seconds; minimum is 1 second; maximum is 600 seconds (10 minutes).

The longer the Keep‑alive timeout, the more Cribl Stream will reuse connections. The shorter the timeout, the closer Cribl Stream gets to creating a new connection for every request. When request frequency is high, you can use longer timeouts to reduce the number of connections created, which mitigates the associated cost.

Environment: If you’re using GitOps, optionally use this field to specify a single Git branch on which to enable this configuration. If empty, the config will be enabled everywhere.

Enable proxy mode: If you toggle this to Yes, see Proxy Mode below for the resulting options.

Extra HTTP Headers: Name-value pairs to pass as additional HTTP headers. By default, Cribl Stream’s responses to HTTP requests include the X‑elastic‑product header, with an Elasticsearch value. (This is required by certain clients, including some Elastic Beats.)

API Version: To upstream Elastic Beats, this Cribl Stream Source will appear as an Elasticsearch instance matching the version that you set in this drop-down:

  • 6.8.4 – Retained for backward compatibility.
  • 8.3.2 – This default entry matches Elasticsearch’s current 8.3.x versions.
  • Custom – Opens an HTTP response object in the Custom API Version editor. This object replicates what an Elasticsearch server would send in its HTTP responses to a client. You can edit the version : number, and any other fields, as required to satisfy the Elastic Beat sending data to this Source. (This Custom option supports future Elasticsearch releases, as long as Elasticsearch keeps the same response-object structure.)

Proxy Mode​

Enabling proxy mode allows Cribl Stream to proxy non–Bulk API requests to a downstream Elasticsearch server. This can be useful when integrating with Elasticsearch API senders like Elastic Endgame agents, which send requests that Cribl Stream does not natively support. Sliding Enable proxy mode to Yes exposes the following controls.

Proxy URL: URL of the Elasticsearch server that will proxy non-bulk requests, e.g.: http://elastic:9200.

Reject unauthorized certificates: Reject certificates that are not authorized by a trusted CA (e.g., the system’s CA). Defaults to No.

Remove headers: Enter any headers that you want removed from proxied requests. Press Tab or Return to separate header names.

Proxy request timeout: How long, in seconds, to wait for a proxy request to complete before aborting it. Defaults to 60 seconds; minimum timeout is 1 second.

To understand how Proxy request timeout interacts with the X‑Forwarded‑For header, see Overriding  __srcIpPort with Client IP/Port.

Authentication method: Select one of the following options.

  • None: Don’t use authentication.

  • Manual: Displays Username and Password fields for you to enter HTTP Basic authentication credentials.

  • Secret: This option exposes a Credentials secret drop-down, in which you can select a stored secret that references the credentials described above. A Create link is available to store a new, reusable secret.

Balancing Connection Reuse Against Request Distribution​

Max requests per socket allows you to limit the number of HTTP requests an upstream client can send on one network connection. Once the limit is reached, Cribl Stream uses HTTP headers to inform the client that it must establish a new connection to send any more requests. (Specifically, Cribl Stream sets the HTTP Connection header to close.) After that, if the client disregards what Cribl Stream has asked it to do and tries to send another HTTP request over the existing connection, Cribl Stream will respond with an HTTP status code of 503 Service Unavailable.

Use this setting to strike a balance between connection reuse by the client, and distribution of requests among one or more Worker Node processes by Cribl Stream:

  • When a client sends a sequence of requests on the same connection, that is called connection reuse. Because connection reuse benefits client performance by avoiding the overhead of creating new connections, clients have an incentive to maximize connection reuse.

  • Meanwhile, a single process on that Worker Node will handle all the requests of a single network connection, for the lifetime of the connection. When receiving a large overall set of data, Cribl Stream performs better when the workload is distributed across multiple Worker Node processes. In that situation, it makes sense to limit connection reuse.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution, because of variation in the size of the payload a client sends with a request and in the number of requests a client wants to send in one sequence. Start by estimating how long connections will stay open. To do this, multiply the typical time that requests take to process (based on payload size) times the number of requests the client typically wants to send.

If the result is 60 seconds or longer, set Max requests per socket to force the client to create a new connection sooner. This way, more data can be spread over more Worker Node processes within a given unit of time.

For example: Suppose a client tries to send thousands of requests over a very few connections that stay open for hours on end. By setting a relatively low Max requests per socket, you can ensure that the same work is done over more, shorter-lived connections distributed between more Worker Node processes, yielding better performance from Cribl Stream.

A final point to consider is that one Cribl Stream Source can receive requests from more than one client, making it more complicated to determine an optimal value for Max requests per socket.

Connected Destinations​

Select Send to Routes to enable conditional routing, filtering, and cloning of this Source’s data via the Routing table.

Select QuickConnect to send this Source’s data to one or more Destinations via independent, direct connections.

Field Normalization​

The Elasticsearch API input normalizes the following fields:

  • @timestamp becomes _time at millisecond resolution.
  • host is set to host.name.
  • Original object host is stored in __host.

The Elasticsearch Destination does the reverse, and it also recognizes the presence of __host.

Internal Fields​

Cribl Stream uses a set of internal fields to assist in handling of data. These “meta” fields are not part of an event, but they are accessible, and Functions can use them to make processing decisions.

Fields for this Source:

  • __headers – Added only when Advanced Settings > Capture request headers is set to Yes.
  • __host
  • __id
  • __index
  • __inputId
  • __pipeline - If present in the Elasticsearch event.action field of the event. See also how to override the pipeline attribute.
  • __srcIpPort – See details below.
  • __type

Overriding the Pipeline Attribute in the Elasticsearch and Elastic Cloud Destinations​

The Elasticsearch Source will record the pipeline attribute received in a variable named __pipeline, if pipeline was presented in the Source event. If you want to forward the pipeline from the Source event to an Elasticsearch or Elastic Cloud Destination, set up the Elastic pipeline in one of the following ways.

This expression will use the value of __pipeline or default to 'myPipeline' if __pipeline is missing:

__pipeline || ‘myPipeline'

An alternative is to pass the pipeline if present, or otherwise omit it:

__pipeline ? __pipeline : undefined

Overriding __srcIpPort with Client IP/Port​

The __srcIpPort field’s value contains the IP address and (optionally) port of the Elasticsearch client sending data to this Source.

When any proxies (including load balancers) lie between the Elasticsearch client and the Source, the last proxy adds an X‑Forwarded‑For header whose value is the IP/port of the original client. With multiple proxies, this header’s value will be an array, whose first item is the original client IP/port.

If X‑Forwarded‑For is present, and Advanced Settings > Enable proxy protocol is set to No, the original client IP/port in this header will override the value of __srcIpPort.

If Enable proxy protocol is set to Yes, the X‑Forwarded‑For header’s contents will not override the __srcIpPort value. (Here, the upstream proxy can convey the client IP/port without using this header.)

Configuring Elastic Beats​

Beats are open-source data shippers that act as agents, sending data to Elasticsearch (or to other services, in this case Cribl Stream). The Beats most popular with Cribl users are Filebeat and Winlogbeat.

To set up a Beat to send data to Cribl Stream, edit the Beat’s YAML configuration file: filebeat.yml for Filebeat, winlogbeat.yml for Winlogbeat, and so on. In the config file, you’ll specify your Cribl Stream Elasticsearch Source endpoint as the Beat’s Elasticsearch output. To the Beat, Cribl Stream will appear as an instance of Elasticsearch.

If you’re using HTTP token authentication (which is disabled by default, both on-prem and on Cribl.Cloud): First, set the token. Then add the following to the Beat config file under output.elasticsearch.headers, substituting your token for myToken42:

output.elasticsearch:
  headers:
    Authorization: "myToken42"

Configuring an Elastic Agent​

An Elastic Agent is single agent for logs, metrics, security data, and threat prevention that sends data to Elasticsearch (or to other services, in this case Cribl Stream).

When you are sending from an Elastic Agent to Cribl Stream, the elastic-agent.yml file doesn’t pay any attention to the settings for output.elasticsarch.allow_older_versions: true. As a result, the Elasticsearch API Source will not get any data.

To set it up correctly, go to the Advanced Settings tab, and change the API Version to Custom. In the Custom API Version editor, edit the version : number to match the version of the Elastic Agent you are using. This should allow the data to start flowing to the Source.

Periodic Logging​

Cribl Stream logs metrics about incoming requests and ingested events once per minute.

If one or more auth tokens are configured and enabled, Cribl Stream logs requests and events for each enabled auth token individually. Since the tokens themselves are redacted for security, Cribl Stream logs the initial text of the token description to help you identify which token a given log is for.

If no auth token is configured and enabled, Cribl Stream simply logs overall statistics about incoming requests and ingested events.

These logs are stored in the metrics.log file. To view them in the UI, open the Source’s Logs tab and choose Worker Process X Metrics from the drop-down, where X is the desired Worker process.