# Packetbeat File Output Options
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/packetbeat-file-output-options/76625
**Category:** Beats
**Tags:** packetbeat
**Created:** [February 27, 2017, 1:43pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/packetbeat-file-output-options/76625 "2017-02-27T13:43:59Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@sdeshpande](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/sdeshpande)
#### Post date: [February 27, 2017, 1:43pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/packetbeat-file-output-options/76625/1 "2017-02-27T13:43:59Z")
Hi Guys,
I have couple of questions with Packetbeat.
I am trying to implement Packetbeat to sniff traffic on my network so that we can feed the collected data to a analytics platform. I have a span port configured on our network which is connected to the server on which Packetbeat is installed. I am able to see the data coming in to packetbeat and I want to write that to flat file. I am currently using packetbeat's File Output but I find it limited with respect to options it provides ( I could be completely wrong as I may not know other options it has)
1. Can you please tell me if there is a way to specify Date and Time in the fileaname like (%MMDDYYYY)
2. Can you please tell me if there is an option so that we can compress the Packetbeat file output ? I am generating over 1GB of data every hour and I will it might be a good idea to compress it.
The output options I have chosen are as below.
output.file:
path: "/datacollection/packetbeat"
filename: output
rotate\_every\_kb: 100000
#number\_of\_files: 7
Thank you very much.
---
### Author:  [@steffens](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/steffens)
#### Post date: [February 27, 2017, 11:35pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/packetbeat-file-output-options/76625/2 "2017-02-27T23:35:40Z")
including the date in the filename and compress on write (or rotate) are currently not available from beats. Feel free to open an [enhancement request](https://github.com/elastic/beats/issues).
As workaround you can use the console output and use tools like [multilog](http://cr.yp.to/daemontools/multilog.html) or [tinylog](http://b0llix.net/perp/site.cgi?page=tinylog.8).
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### Author:  [@sdeshpande](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/sdeshpande)
#### Post date: [February 28, 2017, 1:00pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/packetbeat-file-output-options/76625/3 "2017-02-28T13:00:07Z")
Thank you for the response Steffen.
Regards
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [March 28, 2017, 1:00pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/packetbeat-file-output-options/76625/4 "2017-03-28T13:00:25Z")
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