how to remove filebeat metadata - apache-kafka

Question

am using filebeat to forward incoming logs from haproxy to Kafka topic but after forwarding filebeat is adding so much metadata to the kafka message which consumes more memory which I want to avoid.
Example of message sinked to kafka from filebeat where it is adding metadata, host and lot of other things:
{
"#timestamp": "2017-03-27T08:14:09.508Z",
"beat": {
"hostname": "stage-kube03",
"name": "stage-kube03",
"version": "5.2.1"
},
"input_type": "log",
"message": {
"message": {
"activityType": null
},
"offset": 3783008,
"source": "/var/log/audit.log",
"type": "log"
}
How do I control/reduce the additional metadata filebeat adds to kafka message along with the log line payload? below is my filebeat.yml file
###################### Filebeat Configuration Example #########################
# This file is an example configuration file highlighting only the most common
# options. The filebeat.reference.yml file from the same directory contains all the
# supported options with more comments. You can use it as a reference.
#
# You can find the full configuration reference here:
# https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/beats/filebeat/index.html
# For more available modules and options, please see the filebeat.reference.yml sample
# configuration file.
#=========================== Filebeat inputs =============================
filebeat.inputs:
# Each - is an input. Most options can be set at the input level, so
# you can use different inputs for various configurations.
# Below are the input specific configurations.
- type: log
# Change to true to enable this input configuration.
enabled: true
# Paths that should be crawled and fetched. Glob based paths.
paths:
- /var/log/haproxy.log
#exclude_files: [".gz$"]
#fields:
# codec: plain
# token: USER_TOKEN
# type: haproxy_log
#fields_under_root: true
#- c:\programdata\elasticsearch\logs\*
processors:
- drop_event:
# fields: ["prospector","event","dataset"]
# Exclude lines. A list of regular expressions to match. It drops the lines that are
# matching any regular expression from the list.
#exclude_lines: ['^DBG']
exclude_lines: ['^source']
# Include lines. A list of regular expressions to match. It exports the lines that are
# matching any regular expression from the list.
#include_lines: ['^ERR', '^WARN']
# Exclude files. A list of regular expressions to match. Filebeat drops the files that
# are matching any regular expression from the list. By default, no files are dropped.
#exclude_files: ['.gz$']
# Optional additional fields. These fields can be freely picked
# to add additional information to the crawled log files for filtering
#fields:
# level: debug
# review: 1
### Multiline options
# Multiline can be used for log messages spanning multiple lines. This is common
# for Java Stack Traces or C-Line Continuation
# The regexp Pattern that has to be matched. The example pattern matches all lines starting with [
#multiline.pattern: ^\[
# Defines if the pattern set under pattern should be negated or not. Default is false.
#multiline.negate: false
# Match can be set to "after" or "before". It is used to define if lines should be append to a pattern
# that was (not) matched before or after or as long as a pattern is not matched based on negate.
# Note: After is the equivalent to previous and before is the equivalent to to next in Logstash
#multiline.match: after
#============================= Filebeat modules ===============================
filebeat.config.modules:
# Glob pattern for configuration loading
path: ${path.config}/modules.d/*.yml
# Set to true to enable config reloading
reload.enabled: false
# Period on which files under path should be checked for changes
#reload.period: 10s
#==================== Elasticsearch template setting ==========================
setup.template.settings:
index.number_of_shards: 3
#index.codec: best_compression
#_source.enabled: false
#================================ General =====================================
# The name of the shipper that publishes the network data. It can be used to group
# all the transactions sent by a single shipper in the web interface.
#name:
# The tags of the shipper are included in their own field with each
# transaction published.
#tags: ["service-X", "web-tier"]
# Optional fields that you can specify to add additional information to the
# output.
#fields:
# env: staging
#============================== Dashboards =====================================
# These settings control loading the sample dashboards to the Kibana index. Loading
# the dashboards is disabled by default and can be enabled either by setting the
# options here, or by using the `-setup` CLI flag or the `setup` command.
#setup.dashboards.enabled: false
# The URL from where to download the dashboards archive. By default this URL
# has a value which is computed based on the Beat name and version. For released
# versions, this URL points to the dashboard archive on the artifacts.elastic.co
# website.
#setup.dashboards.url:
#============================== Kibana =====================================
# Starting with Beats version 6.0.0, the dashboards are loaded via the Kibana API.
# This requires a Kibana endpoint configuration.
setup.kibana:
# Kibana Host
# Scheme and port can be left out and will be set to the default (http and 5601)
# In case you specify and additional path, the scheme is required: http://localhost:5601/path
# IPv6 addresses should always be defined as: https://[2001:db8::1]:5601
#host: "localhost:5601"
# Kibana Space ID
# ID of the Kibana Space into which the dashboards should be loaded. By default,
# the Default Space will be used.
#space.id:
#============================= Elastic Cloud ==================================
# These settings simplify using filebeat with the Elastic Cloud (https://cloud.elastic.co/).
# The cloud.id setting overwrites the `output.elasticsearch.hosts` and
# `setup.kibana.host` options.
# You can find the `cloud.id` in the Elastic Cloud web UI.
#cloud.id:
# The cloud.auth setting overwrites the `output.elasticsearch.username` and
# `output.elasticsearch.password` settings. The format is `<user>:<pass>`.
#cloud.auth:
#================================ Outputs =====================================
# Configure what output to use when sending the data collected by the beat.
#-------------------------- Elasticsearch output ------------------------------
#output.elasticsearch:
# Array of hosts to connect to.
# hosts: ["localhost:9200"]
# Enabled ilm (beta) to use index lifecycle management instead daily indices.
#ilm.enabled: false
# Optional protocol and basic auth credentials.
#protocol: "https"
#username: "elastic"
#password: "changeme"
#----------------------------- Logstash output --------------------------------
#output.logstash:
# The Logstash hosts
#hosts: ["localhost:5044"]
# Optional SSL. By default is off.
# List of root certificates for HTTPS server verifications
#ssl.certificate_authorities: ["/etc/pki/root/ca.pem"]
# Certificate for SSL client authentication
#ssl.certificate: "/etc/pki/client/cert.pem"
# Client Certificate Key
#ssl.key: "/etc/pki/client/cert.key"
#================================ Processors =====================================
# Configure processors to enhance or manipulate events generated by the beat.
processors:
- add_host_metadata: ~
- add_cloud_metadata: ~
#================================ Logging =====================================
# Sets log level. The default log level is info.
# Available log levels are: error, warning, info, debug
#logging.level: debug
# At debug level, you can selectively enable logging only for some components.
# To enable all selectors use ["*"]. Examples of other selectors are "beat",
# "publish", "service".
#logging.selectors: ["*"]
#============================== Xpack Monitoring ===============================
# filebeat can export internal metrics to a central Elasticsearch monitoring
# cluster. This requires xpack monitoring to be enabled in Elasticsearch. The
# reporting is disabled by default.
# Set to true to enable the monitoring reporter.
#xpack.monitoring.enabled: false
# Uncomment to send the metrics to Elasticsearch. Most settings from the
# Elasticsearch output are accepted here as well. Any setting that is not set is
# automatically inherited from the Elasticsearch output configuration, so if you
# have the Elasticsearch output configured, you can simply uncomment the
# following line.
#xpack.monitoring.elasticsearch:
output.kafka:
hosts: ["10.12.0.90:9092"]
topic: "data-meter-topic"
codec.json:
pretty: true

Answer 1

You need to remove the additional add_host_metadata and add_cloud_metadata metadata you're adding explicitly and remove the remainder of the fields with the drop_field processor:
I've tested your configuration and changed the following:
filebeat.inputs:
- type: log
enabled: true
paths:
- /var/log/*.log
output.console:
pretty: true
processors:
- drop_fields:
fields: ["agent", "log", "input", "host", "ecs" ]
#- add_host_metadata: ~
#- add_cloud_metadata: ~
The result:
{
"#timestamp": "2020-11-27T15:55:17.098Z",
"#metadata": {
"beat": "filebeat",
"type": "_doc",
"version": "7.10.0"
},
"message": "2020-11-27 00:29:58 status installed libc-bin:amd64 2.28-10"
}
According to the documentation, you can't remove some of the metadata, namely the #timestamp and type (which should include the #metadata field).
The drop_fields processor specifies which fields to drop if a certain
condition is fulfilled. The condition is optional. If it’s missing,
the specified fields are always dropped. The #timestamp and type
fields cannot be dropped, even if they show up in the drop_fields
list.
EDIT:
Since you appear to be running filebeat 5.2.1, I've tried the following configuration with even better success than filebeat 7.x:
filebeat.prospectors:
- input_type: log
paths:
- /var/log/*.log
output.console:
pretty: true
processors:
- drop_fields:
fields: ["log_type", "input_type", "offset", "beat", "source"]
Result:
{
"#timestamp": "2020-11-30T09:51:40.404Z",
"message": "2020-11-27 00:29:58 status half-configured vim:amd64 2:8.1.0875-5",
"type": "log"
}
EDIT2:
Conversely, because you've posted a filebeat 6.8.0 version output, I've also tested with this very same version:
filebeat.inputs:
- type: log
enabled: true
paths:
- /var/log/*.log
output.console:
pretty: true
processors:
- drop_fields:
fields: ["beat", "source", "prospector", "offset", "host", "log", "input", "event", "fileset" ]
#- add_host_metadata: ~
#- add_cloud_metadata: ~
Output:
{
"#timestamp": "2020-11-30T10:08:26.176Z",
"#metadata": {
"beat": "filebeat",
"type": "doc",
"version": "6.8.0"
},
"message": "2020-11-27 00:29:58 status unpacked vim:amd64 2:8.1.0875-5"
}