System

The System integration allows you to monitor servers, personal computers, and more.

Use the System integration to collect metrics and logs from your machines. Then visualize that data in Kibana, create alerts to notify you if something goes wrong, and reference data when troubleshooting an issue.

For example, if you wanted to be notified when less than 10% of the disk space is still available, you could install the System integration to send file system metrics to Elastic. Then, you could view real-time updates to disk space used on your system in Kibana's [Metrics System] Overview dashboard. You could also set up a new rule in the Elastic Observability Metrics app to alert you when the percent free is less than 10% of the total disk space.

Data streams

The System integration collects two types of data: logs and metrics.

Logs help you keep a record of events that happen on your machine. Log data streams collected by the System integration include application, system, and security events on machines running Windows and auth and syslog events on machines running macOS or Linux. See more details in the Logs reference.

Metrics give you insight into the state of the machine. Metric data streams collected by the System integration include CPU usage, load statistics, memory usage, information on network behavior, and more. See more details in the Metrics reference.

You can enable and disable individual data streams. If all data streams are disabled and the System integration is still enabled, Fleet uses the default data streams.

Requirements

You need Elasticsearch for storing and searching your data and Kibana for visualizing and managing it. You can use our hosted Elasticsearch Service on Elastic Cloud, which is recommended, or self-manage the Elastic Stack on your own hardware.

Each data stream collects different kinds of metric data, which may require dedicated permissions to be fetched and which may vary across operating systems. Details on the permissions needed for each data stream are available in the Metrics reference.

Setup

For step-by-step instructions on how to set up an integration, see the Getting started guide.

Troubleshooting

Note that certain data streams may access /proc to gather process information, and the resulting ptrace_may_access() call by the kernel to check for permissions can be blocked by AppArmor and other LSM software, even though the System module doesn't use ptrace directly.

In addition, when running inside a container the proc filesystem directory of the host should be set using system.hostfs setting to /hostfs.

Logs reference

Application

The Windows application data stream provides events from the Windows Application event log.

Supported operating systems

• Windows

Exported fields

System

The Windows system data stream provides events from the Windows System event log.

Supported operating systems

• Windows

Exported fields

Security

The Windows security data stream provides events from the Windows Security event log.

Supported operating systems

• Windows

An example event for security looks as following:

{
    "@timestamp": "2019-11-07T10:37:04.226Z",
    "agent": {
        "ephemeral_id": "aa973fb6-b8fe-427e-a9e9-51c411926db8",
        "id": "dbc761fd-dec4-4bc7-acec-8e5cb02a0cb6",
        "name": "docker-fleet-agent",
        "type": "filebeat",
        "version": "8.2.1"
    },
    "data_stream": {
        "dataset": "system.security",
        "namespace": "ep",
        "type": "logs"
    },
    "ecs": {
        "version": "8.0.0"
    },
    "elastic_agent": {
        "id": "dbc761fd-dec4-4bc7-acec-8e5cb02a0cb6",
        "snapshot": true,
        "version": "8.2.1"
    },
    "event": {
        "action": "logging-service-shutdown",
        "agent_id_status": "verified",
        "category": [
            "process"
        ],
        "code": "1100",
        "created": "2022-05-18T06:07:07.204Z",
        "dataset": "system.security",
        "ingested": "2022-05-18T06:07:08Z",
        "kind": "event",
        "original": "\u003cEvent xmlns='http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event'\u003e\u003cSystem\u003e\u003cProvider Name='Microsoft-Windows-Eventlog' Guid='{fc65ddd8-d6ef-4962-83d5-6e5cfe9ce148}'/\u003e\u003cEventID\u003e1100\u003c/EventID\u003e\u003cVersion\u003e0\u003c/Version\u003e\u003cLevel\u003e4\u003c/Level\u003e\u003cTask\u003e103\u003c/Task\u003e\u003cOpcode\u003e0\u003c/Opcode\u003e\u003cKeywords\u003e0x4020000000000000\u003c/Keywords\u003e\u003cTimeCreated SystemTime='2019-11-07T10:37:04.226092500Z'/\u003e\u003cEventRecordID\u003e14257\u003c/EventRecordID\u003e\u003cCorrelation/\u003e\u003cExecution ProcessID='1144' ThreadID='4532'/\u003e\u003cChannel\u003eSecurity\u003c/Channel\u003e\u003cComputer\u003eWIN-41OB2LO92CR.wlbeat.local\u003c/Computer\u003e\u003cSecurity/\u003e\u003c/System\u003e\u003cUserData\u003e\u003cServiceShutdown xmlns='http://manifests.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/windows/eventlog'\u003e\u003c/ServiceShutdown\u003e\u003c/UserData\u003e\u003c/Event\u003e",
        "outcome": "success",
        "provider": "Microsoft-Windows-Eventlog",
        "type": [
            "end"
        ]
    },
    "host": {
        "name": "WIN-41OB2LO92CR.wlbeat.local"
    },
    "input": {
        "type": "httpjson"
    },
    "log": {
        "level": "information"
    },
    "tags": [
        "forwarded",
        "preserve_original_event"
    ],
    "winlog": {
        "channel": "Security",
        "computer_name": "WIN-41OB2LO92CR.wlbeat.local",
        "event_id": "1100",
        "keywords": [
            "Audit Success"
        ],
        "level": "information",
        "opcode": "Info",
        "outcome": "success",
        "process": {
            "pid": 1144,
            "thread": {
                "id": 4532
            }
        },
        "provider_guid": "{fc65ddd8-d6ef-4962-83d5-6e5cfe9ce148}",
        "provider_name": "Microsoft-Windows-Eventlog",
        "record_id": "14257",
        "time_created": "2019-11-07T10:37:04.226Z"
    }
}

Exported fields