Metricbeat modules

Question

Why are there two modules in metric beat for ES

1. Elasticsearch
2. Elasticsearch-pack

Both has same configurations in the modules.d directory.

Kibana page for Elasticsearch module suggests to use Elasticsearch module.

But documentation of Elasticsearch modules suggests the later one. Reference

Alternatively, run metricbeat modules disable elasticsearch and metricbeat modules enable elasticsearch-xpack.

It's so confusing. I think that if I need to use ES-wtih-Xpack, then the later module. But from 6.7.0 onwards, ES ships basic features of x-pack with open source one.

Thanks.

Answer 1

The configuration are almost the same, the elasticsearch-xpack has the option xpack.enabled: true, which is not present in the elasticsearch module, and in the elasticsearch-xpack modulo you also do not specify any metricsets.

If you are using the monitoring UI in Kibana, then you should use the elasticsearch-xpack module, which will collect the metrics that kibana needs.

If you are not using the monitoring UI in Kibana, or are not even using Kibana and just want to collect the metrics, then you need to use the elasticsearch module and specify the metricsets that you want to collect.

The elasticsearch-xpack is just the elasticsearch module without any metricsets configured and with the option xpack.enabled: true.