ElastAlert Server

A server that runs ElastAlert and exposes REST API's for manipulating rules and alerts. It works great in combination with our ElastAlert Kibana plugin.

---

Installation

The most convenient way to run the ElastAlert server is by using our Docker container image. The default configuration uses localhost:9200 as ElasticSearch host, if this is not the case in your setup please edit es_host and es_port in both the elastalert.yaml and config.json configuration files.

To run the Docker image you will want to mount the volumes for configuration and rule files to keep them after container updates. In order to do that conveniently, please do: git clone https://github.com/bitsensor/elastalert.git; cd elastalert

docker run -d -p 3030:3030 \
    -v `pwd`/config/elastalert.yaml:/opt/elastalert/config.yaml \
    -v `pwd`/config/elastalert-test.yaml:/opt/elastalert/config-test.yaml \
    -v `pwd`/config/config.json:/opt/elastalert-server/config/config.json \
    -v `pwd`/rules:/opt/elastalert/rules \
    -v `pwd`/rule_templates:/opt/elastalert/rule_templates \
    --net="host" \
    --name elastalert bitsensor/elastalert:latest

Building Docker image

Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/bitsensor/elastalert.git && cd elastalert

Build the image

make build

which is equivalent of

docker pull alpine:latest && docker pull node:latest
docker build -t elastalert .

Options

Using a custom ElastAlert version (a release from github) e.g. master or v0.1.28

make build v=v0.1.28

Using a custom mirror

docker build --build-arg ELASTALERT_URL=http://example.mirror.com/master.zip -t elastalert .

Configuration

In config/config.example.json you'll find the default config. You can make a config.json file in the same folder that overrides the default config. When forking this repository it is recommended to remove config.json from the .gitignore file. For local testing purposes you can then use a config.dev.json file which overrides config.json.

You can use the following config options:

{
  "appName": "elastalert-server", // The name used by the logging framework.
  "port": 3030, // The port to bind to
  "elastalertPath": "/opt/elastalert",  // The path to the root ElastAlert folder. It's the folder that contains the `setup.py` script.
  "start": "2014-01-01T00:00:00", // Optional date to start querying from
  "end": "2016-01-01T00:00:00", // Optional date to stop querying at
  "verbose": true, // Optional, will increase the logging verboseness, which allows you to see information about the state of queries.
  "es_debug": true, // Optional, will enable logging for all queries made to Elasticsearch
  "debug": false, // Will run ElastAlert in debug mode. This will increase the logging verboseness, change all alerts to DebugAlerter, which prints alerts and suppresses their normal action, and skips writing search and alert metadata back to Elasticsearch.
  "rulesPath": { // The path to the rules folder containing all the rules. If the folder is empty a dummy file will be created to allow ElastAlert to start.
    "relative": true, // Whether to use a path relative to the `elastalertPath` folder.
    "path": "/rules" // The path to the rules folder. 
  },
  "templatesPath": { // The path to the rules folder containing all the rule templates. If the folder is empty a dummy file will be created to allow ElastAlert to start.
    "relative": true, // Whether to use a path relative to the `elastalertPath` folder.
    "path": "/rule_templates" // The path to the rule templates folder.
  },
  "dataPath": { // The path to a folder that the server can use to store data and temporary files.
    "relative": true, // Whether to use a path relative to the `elastalertPath` folder.
    "path": "/server_data" // The path to the data folder.
  },
  "es_host": "localhost", // For getting metadata and field mappings, connect to this ES server
  "es_port": 9200, // Port for above
  "writeback_index": "elastalert_status" // Writeback index to examine for /metadata endpoint
}

ElastAlert also expects a elastalert.yaml with at least the following options.

# The elasticsearch hostname for metadata writeback
# Note that every rule can have its own elasticsearch host
es_host: localhost

# The elasticsearch port
es_port: 9200

# The index on es_host which is used for metadata storage
# This can be a unmapped index, but it is recommended that you run
# elastalert-create-index to set a mapping
writeback_index: elastalert_status

# This is the folder that contains the rule yaml files
# Any .yaml file will be loaded as a rule
rules_folder: rules

# How often ElastAlert will query elasticsearch
# The unit can be anything from weeks to seconds
run_every:
  seconds: 5

# ElastAlert will buffer results from the most recent
# period of time, in case some log sources are not in real time
buffer_time:
  minutes: 1

There is also a elastalert-test.yaml file which is only used when you use the API to test a rule. This allows you to write to a different writeback_index for example when testing rules.

API

This server exposes the following REST API's:

• GET /

  Exposes the current version running

• GET /status

  Returns either 'SETUP', 'READY', 'ERROR', 'STARTING', 'CLOSING', 'FIRST_RUN' or 'IDLE' depending on the current ElastAlert process status.

• GET /status/control/:action

  Where :action can be either 'start' or 'stop', which will respectively start or stop the current ElastAlert process.

• [WIP] GET /status/errors

  When /status returns 'ERROR' this returns a list of errors that were triggered.

• GET /rules

  Returns a list of directories and rules that exist in the rulesPath (from the config) and are being run by the ElastAlert process.

• GET /rules/:id

  Where :id is the id of the rule returned by GET /rules, which will return the file contents of that rule.

• POST /rules/:id

  Where :id is the id of the rule returned by GET /rules, which will allow you to edit the rule. The body send should be:

  ```javascript
  {
    // Required - The full yaml rule config.
    "yaml": "..."
  }
  ```
  

• DELETE /rules/:id

  Where :id is the id of the rule returned by GET /rules, which will delete the given rule.

• GET /templates

  Returns a list of directories and templates that exist in the templatesPath (from the config) and are being run by the ElastAlert process.

• GET /templates/:id

  Where :id is the id of the template returned by GET /templates, which will return the file contents of that template.

• POST /templates/:id

  Where :id is the id of the template returned by GET /templates, which will allow you to edit the template. The body send should be:

  ```javascript
  {
    // Required - The full yaml template config.
    "yaml": "..."
  }
  ```
  

• DELETE /templates/:id

  Where :id is the id of the template returned by GET /templates, which will delete the given template.

• POST /test

  This allows you to test a rule. The body send should be:

  ```javascript
  {
    // Required - The full yaml rule config.
    "rule": "...",
    
    // Optional - The options to use for testing the rule.
    "options": {
    
      // Can be either "all", "schemaOnly" or "countOnly". "all" will give the full console output. 
      // "schemaOnly" will only validate the yaml config. "countOnly" will only find the number of matching documents and list available fields.
      "testType": "all",
      
      // Can be any number larger than 0 and this tells ElastAlert over a period of how many days the test should be run
      "days": "1"
      
      // Whether to send real alerts
      "alert": false,
  
      // Return results in structured JSON
      "format": "json",
  
      // Limit returned results to this amount
      "maxResults": 1000
    }
  }
  ``` 
  

• GET /metadata/:type

  Returns metadata from elasticsearch related to elasalert's state. :type should be one of: elastalert_status, elastalert, elastalert_error, or silence. See docs about the elastalert metadata index.

• GET /mapping/:index

  Returns field mapping from elasticsearch for a given index.

• [WIP] GET /config

  Gets the ElastAlert configuration from config.yaml in elastalertPath (from the config).

• [WIP] POST /config

  Allows you to edit the ElastAlert configuration from config.yaml in elastalertPath (from the config). The required body to be send will be edited when the work on this API is done.

• [WIP] POST /download

  Allows you to download a .tar archive with rules from a given HTTP endpoint. The archive will be downloaded, extracted and removed. Please note, body should contain URL pointing to tar archive, with tar extension.

  Usage example:

  curl -X POST localhost:3030/download -d "url=https://artifactory.com:443/artifactory/raw/rules/rules.tar"

Contributing

Want to contribute to this project? Great! Please read our contributing guidelines before submitting an issue or a pull request.

We only accept pull requests on our GitHub repository!

Contact

We'd love to help you if you have any questions. You can contact us by sending an e-mail to [email protected] or by using the contact info on our website.

License

This project is BSD Licensed with some modifications. Note that this only accounts for the ElastAlert Server, not ElastAlert itself (ElastAlert License).

Disclaimer

We (BitSensor) do not have any rights over the original ElastAlert project from Yelp. We do not own any trademarks or copyright to the name "ElastAlert" (ElastAlert, however, does because of their Apache 2 license). We do own copyright over the source code of this project, as stated in our BSD license, which means the copyright notice below and as stated in the BSD license should be included in (merged / changed) distributions of this project. The BSD license also states that making promotional content using 'BitSensor' is prohibited. However we hereby grant permission to anyone who wants to use the phrases 'BitSensor ElastAlert Plugin', 'BitSensor Software' or 'BitSensor Alerting' in promotional content. Phrases like 'We use BitSensor' or 'We use BitSensor security' when only using our ElastAlert Server are forbidden.

Copyright

Copyright © 2018, BitSensor B.V. All rights reserved.