Event log index

Warning

This functionality is in technical preview and may be changed or removed in a future release. Elastic will work to fix any issues, but features in technical preview are not subject to the support SLA of official GA features.

Use the event log index to determine:

Whether a rule ran successfully but its associated actions did not
Whether a rule was ever activated
Additional information about errors when the rule ran
Run durations for the rules and actions

Example event log queries

The following event log query looks at all events related to a specific rule id:

GET /.kibana-event-log*/_search
{
  "sort": [
    {
      "@timestamp": {
        "order": "desc"
      }
    }
  ],
  "query": {
    "bool": {
      "filter": [
        {
          "term": {
            "event.provider": {
              "value": "alerting"
            }
          }
        },
        // optionally filter by specific action event
        {
          "term": {
            "event.action": "active-instance"
              | "execute-action"
              | "new-instance"
              | "recovered-instance"
              | "execute"
          }
        },
        // filter by specific rule id
        {
          "nested": {
            "path": "kibana.saved_objects",
            "query": {
              "bool": {
                "filter": [
                  {
                    "term": {
                      "kibana.saved_objects.id": {
                        "value": "b541b690-bfc4-11eb-bf08-05a30cefd1fc"
                      }
                    }
                  },
                  {
                    "term": {
                      "kibana.saved_objects.type": "alert"
                    }
                  }

                ]
              }
            }
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

The following event log query looks at all events related to running a rule or action. These events include duration:

GET /.kibana-event-log*/_search
{
  "sort": [
    {
      "@timestamp": {
        "order": "desc"
      }
    }
  ],
  "query": {
    "bool": {
      "filter": [
        {
          "term": {
            "event.action": {
              "value": "execute"
            }
          }
        },
        // optionally filter by specific rule or action id
        {
          "nested": {
            "path": "kibana.saved_objects",
            "query": {
              "bool": {
                "filter": [
                  {
                    "term": {
                      "kibana.saved_objects.id": {
                        "value": "b541b690-bfc4-11eb-bf08-05a30cefd1fc"
                      }
                    }
                  }
                ]
              }
            }
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

The following event log query looks at the errors. You should see an error.message property in that event, with a message that might provide more details about why the action encountered an error:

{
  "event": {
    "provider": "actions",
    "action": "execute",
    "start": "2020-03-31T04:27:30.392Z",
    "end": "2020-03-31T04:27:30.393Z",
    "duration": 1000000
  },
  "kibana": {
    "namespace": "default",
    "saved_objects": [
      {
        "type": "action",
        "id": "7a6fd3c6-72b9-44a0-8767-0432b3c70910"
      }
    ],
  },
  "message": "action executed: .server-log:7a6fd3c6-72b9-44a0-8767-0432b3c70910: server-log",
  "@timestamp": "2020-03-31T04:27:30.393Z",
}

You might also see the errors for the rules, which can use in the next search query. For example:

{
  "event": {
    "provider": "alerting",
    "start": "2020-03-31T04:27:30.392Z",
    "end": "2020-03-31T04:27:30.393Z",
    "duration": 1000000
  },
  "kibana": {
    "namespace": "default",
    "saved_objects": [
      {
        "rel" : "primary",
        "type" : "alert",
      	  "id" : "30d856c0-b14b-11eb-9a7c-9df284da9f99"
      }
    ],
  },
  "message": "rule executed: .index-threshold:30d856c0-b14b-11eb-9a7c-9df284da9f99: 'test'",
  "error" : {
    "message" : "Saved object [action/ef0e2530-b14a-11eb-9a7c-9df284da9f99] not found"
  },
}

You can also query the event log for failures, which should return more specific details about rules which failed by targeting the event.outcome:

GET .kibana-event-log-*/_search
{
  "query": {
	"bool": {
  		"must": [
    		{ "match": { "event.outcome": "failure" }}
  	  ]
	  }
  }
}

Here’s an example of what failed credentials from Google SMTP might look like from the response:

"error" : {
  "message" : """error sending email: Invalid login: 535-5.7.8 Username and Password not accepted. Learn more at
535 5.7.8  https://support.google.com/mail/?p=BadCredentials e207sm3359731pfh.171 - gsmtp"""
},