# Any downside to overwrite: true?

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/any-downside-to-overwrite-true/235234>\
**Category:** APM\
**Tags:** server\
**Created:** [June 1, 2020, 9:05pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/any-downside-to-overwrite-true/235234 "2020-06-01T21:05:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![thenewguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c77e96/32.png) [@thenewguy](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/thenewguy)\
**Post date:** [June 1, 2020, 9:05pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/any-downside-to-overwrite-true/235234/1 "2020-06-01T21:05:10Z")

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I am getting started with APM for the first time. I am running an APM server container with my application containers. They push data through logstash to S3 and do not have a direct connection to elasticsearch. I am running setup like this periodically via a CI runner:

```auto
setup \
      -E output.logstash.enabled=false \
      -E output.elasticsearch.enabled=true \
      -E "output.elasticsearch.hosts=['$ELASTICSEARCH_URL']" \
      -E apm-server.rum.kibana.enabled=true \
      -E apm-server.rum.kibana.host="$KIBANA_URL"

```

I noticed overwrite defaults to false. What is the harm in setting it true?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![simitt](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/simitt/32/106406_2.png) [@simitt](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/simitt)\
**Post date:** [June 2, 2020, 9:33am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/any-downside-to-overwrite-true/235234/2 "2020-06-02T09:33:03Z")

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Hi @thenewguy,  
the `*.enabled` settings defaulting to `true` and `*.overwrite` settings defaulting to `false` ensures that non-existing setup steps are run for the `setup` command or when the server is started. The generated index templates and indices contain the APM Server version, so that new features are taken into account on version upgrades when generating new templates, etc. By default running the same setup command twice will lead to the same setup, therefore disabling `overwrite` by default avoids unnecessary overwrites on restart, or when having multiple instances of the same version running. There is no harm though in setting `overwrite` to true if you are not managing any of the templates, ILM policies etc. outside the APM Server.

Looking at your config, you are nesting the `kibana` part under `rum`, while it should be configured as `apm-server.kibana.enabled` and `apm-server.kibana.host`. Please be aware that the `kibana` configuration is not needed for the setup (there is no Kibana dashboards or index patterns loaded in APM Server \>= 7.0). It is used for the APM agents to fetch agent remote configuration from Kibana through the server.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [June 23, 2020, 5:33am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/any-downside-to-overwrite-true/235234/3 "2020-06-23T05:33:17Z")

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