APM Server Offline Retention / Synchronization

[hayden.ball]

Hello.

The APM system looks really promising, and I'm hoping we'll be able to use it to solve our needs.

We've a slightly difficult situation as we've an app that runs in the cloud, but also on client operated site boxes. Site boxes are often offline when in use, and we synchronise data when they next have an internet connection.

We've successfully managed to collect logs by using Logstash's persistent queues, and we're investigating using metricbeat (outputting to Logstash) for system metrics for our site boxes. We're also looking for an APM solution, and I'm hoping that Elastic's APM Server will be up to the job.

Currently, the documentation doesn't mention any way of configuring APM Server to output to Logstash.
Is there any way we could support offline collection of metrics using APM Server (either by outputting to Logstash or otherwise)? If not, is this something that's planned?

[hayden.ball]

Came across https://github.com/elastic/apm-server/issues/664 after posting this, so it looks like it's on the roadmap.

Out of interest, is there any way of making Logstash "appear" like ElasticSearch in the mean time?
I wonder if a TCP input with the es_bulk codec (or something similar) might work?

[gil (Gil Raphaelli)]

@hayden.ball Thanks for giving APM a spin, we're eager to hear more of your feedback.

Your setup does seem challenging but it sounds like you're very close to a working solution. I've updated the github issue with a configuration that might work for your needs. We will continue to update that issue as we make progress towards a supported solution.

[hayden.ball]

Thanks Gil - I'll give it a go.