# Environment variable syntax problems for beats monitoring
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/environment-variable-syntax-problems-for-beats-monitoring/205867
**Category:** Beats
**Created:** [October 30, 2019, 1:27pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/environment-variable-syntax-problems-for-beats-monitoring/205867 "2019-10-30T13:27:56Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@sgreszcz](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/sgreszcz)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2019, 1:27pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/environment-variable-syntax-problems-for-beats-monitoring/205867/1 "2019-10-30T13:27:56Z")
I'm trying to pass through the monitoring elasticsearch cluster hostname as an enterprise variable and set in the metricbeat.yml and filebeat.yml. The variable is:
`MONITORING_ELASTICSEARCH=elk-001`
Hardcoding the name works like this:
```
monitoring:
enabled: true
elasticsearch:
hosts: ["elk-001"]
```
I've tried these syntaxes for the enterprise variable, but none of them work, and the documentation is not too clear: [https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/beats/filebeat/current/using-environ-vars.html](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/beats/filebeat/current/using-environ-vars.html)
```
monitoring:
enabled: true
elasticsearch:
hosts: ["$elk-001"] or hosts: ${elk-001}
```
or many others but it doesn't work.
---
### Author:  [@kvch](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/kvch)
#### Post date: [October 31, 2019, 8:34am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/environment-variable-syntax-problems-for-beats-monitoring/205867/2 "2019-10-31T08:34:57Z")
Have you tried
```auto
monitoring:
enabled: true
elasticsearch.hosts: '$MONITORING_ELASTICSEARCH'
```
?
---
### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [November 28, 2019, 10:46am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/environment-variable-syntax-problems-for-beats-monitoring/205867/3 "2019-11-28T10:46:02Z")
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