# Using beats to ingest facter data?

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/using-beats-to-ingest-facter-data/142050>\
**Category:** Beats\
**Created:** [July 28, 2018, 11:37pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/using-beats-to-ingest-facter-data/142050 "2018-07-28T23:37:06Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![rdesanno](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/rdesanno/32/13607_2.png) [@rdesanno](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/rdesanno)\
**Post date:** [July 28, 2018, 11:37pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/using-beats-to-ingest-facter-data/142050/1 "2018-07-28T23:37:06Z")

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We run a centos environment and I would love to be able to bring in facter data into elastic as a means of monitoring kernel installs, host up times, ip addresses, etc. I suppose I can add a new cron to each host to print out this data into a log and have filebeat ingest it, but was wondering if there was a better way. Metricbeat pulls in a lot of similar data already and wondering if I am just missing a config setting somewhere.

Again, I could script it and deploy it to my 2,500+ servers but that's just another process to monitor and i'm already using beats. Thoughts?

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**Author:** ![andrewkroh](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/andrewkroh/32/3784_2.png) [@andrewkroh](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/andrewkroh)\
**Post date:** [July 30, 2018, 8:20pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/using-beats-to-ingest-facter-data/142050/2 "2018-07-30T20:20:26Z")

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There is an add\_host\_metadata processor that includes information like this to events.

- [add\_host\_metadata](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/beats/metricbeat/master/add-host-metadata.html_)
- I noticed that kernel is missing. We'll fix this shortly. [https://github.com/elastic/beats/issues/7807](https://github.com/elastic/beats/issues/7807)

And there is a metricset dedicated to [system uptime](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/beats/metricbeat/master/metricbeat-metricset-system-uptime.html). I usually declare this one separately in my config so that I can use a longer period as I don't require it to be reported every 10s.

```auto
metricbeat.modules:
- module: system
  metricsets: [uptime]
  period: 5m

```

And finally there is a Beat created by a user called [factbeat](https://github.com/jarpy/factbeat) that runs facter and indexes the JSON output.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![rdesanno](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/rdesanno/32/13607_2.png) [@rdesanno](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/rdesanno)\
**Post date:** [July 30, 2018, 9:32pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/using-beats-to-ingest-facter-data/142050/3 "2018-07-30T21:32:06Z")

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Oh cool and will have to play around with that tomorrow!!

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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:** [August 27, 2018, 11:32pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/using-beats-to-ingest-facter-data/142050/4 "2018-08-27T23:32:10Z")

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