# How is ElasticSearch instrumented?

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-is-elasticsearch-instrumented/176520>\
**Category:** APM\
**Created:** [April 12, 2019, 1:53am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-is-elasticsearch-instrumented/176520 "2019-04-12T01:53:52Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Roy\_Kim](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/roy_kim/32/43986_2.png) [@Roy\_Kim](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Roy_Kim)\
**Post date:** [April 12, 2019, 1:53am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-is-elasticsearch-instrumented/176520/1 "2019-04-12T01:53:52Z")

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Hi team, I'm taking a look at Elastic APM.

I've got a question.  
How does Elastic APM gather data from ElasticSearch? (I mean monitoring ElasticSearch itself)

I can see Elastic APM has es-restclient-plugins. So I think tracing data to ElasticSearch can be collected through es-restclient-plugins.

But how about instrumenting directly to ElasticSearch(since it's Java).  
So. maybe this should be the ultimate question

Do Elastic APM (have a plugin that) instruments ElasticSearch directly? or does it only gather data through es-restclient-plugins

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**Author:** ![felixbarny](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/felixbarny/32/27341_2.png) [@felixbarny](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/felixbarny)\
**Post date:** [April 12, 2019, 7:32am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-is-elasticsearch-instrumented/176520/2 "2019-04-12T07:32:57Z")

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Hi Roy,

Welcome to the forum 🎉 and thanks for your excellent question.

You are right, currently only the queries made with the rest client are monitored. There are no immediate plans to instrument Elasticsearch itself with the APM Java agent.

That being said, Elasticsearch is capable of monitoring itself. See also [https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/es-monitoring.html](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/es-monitoring.html).

The question is: what kind of Elasticsearch monitoring data would you like to be collected?

Thanks,  
Felix

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 2019, 3:33am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-is-elasticsearch-instrumented/176520/3 "2019-05-03T03:33:12Z")

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