Customize pods

You can customize the Pods created for each Elastic Stack application by modifying the respective podTemplate field in the manifest. Pod templates allow you to define labels, annotations, environment variables, volume mounts, and other custom configuration settings that are then merged with the default Pod configuration generated by ECK to produce the final Pod definition that gets deployed to the Kubernetes cluster.

The following example illustrates how to add a custom label, annotation, and an environment variable using the podTemplate field.

apiVersion: elasticsearch.k8s.elastic.co/v1
kind: Elasticsearch
metadata:
  name: quickstart
spec:
  version: 9.5.7
  nodeSets:
  - name: default
    count: 1
    podTemplate:
      metadata:
        labels:
          my.custom.domain/label: "label-value"
        annotations:
          my.custom.domain/annotation: "annotation-value"
      spec:
        containers:
          - name: elasticsearch
            env:
              - name: ES_JAVA_OPTS
                value: "-Xms4g -Xmx4g"
		
apiVersion: kibana.k8s.elastic.co/v1
kind: Kibana
metadata:
  name: quickstart
spec:
  version: 9.5.7
  count: 1
  podTemplate:
    metadata:
      labels:
        my.custom.domain/label: "label-value"
      annotations:
        my.custom.domain/annotation: "annotation-value"
    spec:
      containers:
        - name: kibana
          env:
            - name: NODE_OPTIONS
              value:  "--max-old-space-size=2048"
          resources:
            requests:
              memory: 2Gi
              cpu: 0.5
            limits:
              memory: 2.5Gi
              cpu: 2
  1. When manually setting --max-old-space-size, make sure you adjust the container's resources.limits.memory appropriately.
Note

Configuration for other Elastic Stack applications, like APM Server, or Beats, is identical to the Kibana configuration except for the apiVersion and kind fields.

The following example shows how it’s also possible to customize the init containers created as part of the Pods to initialize the filesystem or to manage the keystores.

apiVersion: elasticsearch.k8s.elastic.co/v1
kind: Elasticsearch
metadata:
  name: quickstart
spec:
  version: 9.5.7
  nodeSets:
    - name: default
      count: 3
      podTemplate:
        spec:
          initContainers:
          - name: elastic-internal-init-keystore
            resources:
              limits:
                cpu: 1000m
                memory: 368Mi
              requests:
                cpu: 1000m
                memory: 368Mi
  secureSettings:
  - secretName: es-secret
  1. override the default resources set by the operator

To customize the containers that ECK creates, use the same container and init container names as the operator. ECK merges your settings with its defaults only for containers that have the expected name. If you use a different name for the main container, ECK still creates its own container with the default settings, and your container runs as an additional container in the Pod without the operator configuration. As a result, settings such as resources and environment variables that you specify for your container don't apply to the main container.

The following table lists the container names that ECK uses:

Resource Main container name Init container names
Elasticsearch elasticsearch elastic-internal-init-filesystem, elastic-internal-suspend, and elastic-internal-init-keystore when you configure secure settings
Kibana kibana elastic-internal-init, and elastic-internal-init-keystore when you configure secure settings
APM Server apm-server elastic-internal-init-keystore when you configure secure settings
Beats The name of the Beat in lower case, for example filebeat, metricbeat, or heartbeat elastic-internal-init-keystore when you configure secure settings
Elastic Agent and Fleet Server agent None
Logstash logstash logstash-internal-init-config, and elastic-internal-init-keystore when you configure secure settings
Elastic Maps Server maps None
Elastic Package Registry package-registry None
AutoOps agent autoops-agent None

For further information: