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Cribl Stream Destination (Deprecated)

This Destination was deprecated as of Cribl Stream 3.5, and has been removed as of v.4.0. Please instead use the Cribl TCP or the Cribl HTTP Destination to enable Worker Nodes to send data to peer Nodes.

The Cribl Stream Destination enables Edge Nodes, and/or Cribl Stream instances, to send data to one or multiple Cribl Stream instances.

Type: Streaming | TLS Support: Configurable | PQ Support: Yes

Use New Destinations Instead
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The replacement Destinations, Cribl TCP and Cribl HTTP, don’t rely on IP filtering, for the following reasons:

  • Load balancers and/or proxies between the Cribl Destination and Cribl Source can change the IP address, resulting in a bad match and rejected ingest.

  • A Lookup table of all IP addresses needed to be sent to each Worker Node/Edge Node from the Leader, which is not scalable.

  • The Lookup table of IP addresses required constant communication between the Worker Node/Edge Nodes and the Leader, making this fragile and placing an arbitrary reliance on the Leader that shouldn’t be there.

Configuring a Cribl Stream Destination
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In the QuickConnect UI: Click Add Destination beside Destinations. From the resulting drawer’s tiles, select Cribl Stream. Next, click Add Destination to open a New Cribl Stream drawer.

Or, in the Data Routes UI: From the top nav of a Cribl Stream instance or Group, select Data > Destinations. From the top nav of a Cribl Edge instance or Fleet, select More > Destinations.

From the resulting page’s tiles or the Destinations left nav, select Cribl Stream. Next, click New Destination to open a Cribl Stream > New Destination modal that provides the following options and fields.

General Settings
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Output ID: Enter a unique name to identify this Destination definition. If you clone this Destination, Cribl Stream will add -CLONE to the original Output ID.

Address: Hostname of the receiver.

Port: Port number to connect to on the host.

Authentication Settings
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Use the Authentication method buttons to select one of these options:

  • Manual: In the resulting Auth token field, you can optionally enter an auth token to use in the connection header.

  • Secret: This option exposes an Auth token (text secret) drop-down, in which you can select a stored secret that references the authToken header field value described above. A Create link is available to store a new, reusable secret.

Optional Settings
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Compression: Codec to use to compress the data before sending. Defaults to None.

Throttling: Throttle rate, in bytes per second. Defaults to 0, meaning no throttling. Multiple-byte units such as KB, MB, GB etc. are also allowed, e.g., 42 MB. When throttling is engaged, your Backpressure behavior selection determines whether Cribl Stream will handle excess data by blocking it, dropping it, or queueing it to disk.

Backpressure behavior: Specifies whether to block, drop, or queue events when all receivers are exerting backpressure. Defaults to Block. See Persistent Queue Settings below.

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

Persistent Queue Settings
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This tab is displayed when the Backpressure behavior is set to Persistent Queue.

On Cribl-managed Cribl.Cloud Workers (with an Enterprise plan), this tab exposes only the destructive Clear Persistent Queue button (described below in this section). A maximum queue size of 1 GB disk space is automatically allocated per PQ‑enabled Destination, per Worker Process. The 1 GB limit is on outbound uncompressed data, and no compression is applied to the queue.

This limit is not configurable. If the queue fills up, Cribl Stream will block outbound data. To configure the queue size, compression, queue-full fallback behavior, and other options below, use a hybrid Group.

Max file size: The maximum data volume to store in each queue file before closing it. Enter a numeral with units of KB, MB, etc. Defaults to 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 Destination will stop queueing data and apply the Queue‑full behavior. 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 value, Cribl Stream will append /<worker‑id>/<output‑id>.

Compression: Codec to use to compress the persisted data, once a file is closed. Defaults to None; Gzip is also available.

Queue-full behavior: Whether to block or drop events when the queue is exerting backpressure (because disk is low or at full capacity). Block is the same behavior as non-PQ blocking, corresponding to the Block option on the Backpressure behavior drop-down. Drop new data throws away incoming data, while leaving the contents of the PQ unchanged.

Clear Persistent Queue: Click this “panic” button if you want to delete the files that are currently queued for delivery to this Destination. A confirmation modal will appear - because this will free up disk space by permanently deleting the queued data, without delivering it to downstream receivers. (Appears only after Output ID has been defined.)

Strict ordering: The default Yes position enables FIFO (first in, first out) event forwarding. When receivers recover, Cribl Stream will send earlier queued events before forwarding newly arrived events. To instead prioritize new events before draining the queue, toggle this off. Doing so will expose this additional control:

  • Drain rate limit (EPS): Optionally, set a throttling rate (in events per second) on writing from the queue to receivers. (The default 0 value disables throttling.) Throttling the queue’s drain rate can boost the throughput of new/active connections, by reserving more resources for them. You can further optimize Workers’ startup connections and CPU load at Group Settings > Worker Processes.

TLS Settings (Client Side)
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Enabled defaults to No. When toggled to Yes:

Autofill?: This setting is experimental.

Validate server 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 No.

Server name (SNI): Server name for the SNI (Server Name Indication) TLS extension. This must be a host name, not an IP address.

Certificate name: The name of the predefined certificate.

CA certificate path: Path on client containing CA certificates (in PEM format) to use to verify the server’s cert. Path can reference $ENV_VARS.

Private key path (mutual auth): Path on client containing the private key (in PEM format) to use. Path can reference $ENV_VARS. Use only if mutual auth is required.

Certificate path (mutual auth): Path on client containing certificates in (PEM format) to use. Path can reference $ENV_VARS. Use only if mutual auth is required.

Passphrase: Passphrase to use to decrypt private key.

Minimum TLS version: Optionally, select the minimum TLS version to use when connecting.

Maximum TLS version: Optionally, select the maximum TLS version to use when connecting.

Timeout Settings
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Connection timeout: Amount of time (in milliseconds) to wait for the connection to establish before retrying. Defaults to 10000.

Write timeout: Amount of time (in milliseconds) to wait for a write to complete before assuming connection is dead. Defaults to 60000.

Processing Settings
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Post‑Processing
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Pipeline: Pipeline to process data before sending the data out using this output.

System fields: A list of fields to automatically add to events that use this output. By default, includes cribl_pipe (identifying the Cribl Stream Pipeline that processed the event). Supports wildcards. Other options include:

  • cribl_host – Cribl Stream Node that processed the event.
  • cribl_wp – Cribl Stream Worker Process that processed the event.
  • cribl_input – Cribl Stream Source that processed the event.
  • cribl_output – Cribl Stream Destination that processed the event.

Advanced Settings
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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.