Configure feature flags for standalone Elastic Agents

The Feature Flags section of the elastic-agent.yml config file contains settings in Elastic Agent that are disabled by default. These may include experimental features, changes to behaviors within Elastic Agent or its components, or settings that could cause a breaking change. For example a setting that changes information included in events might be inconsistent with the naming pattern expected in your configured Elastic Agent output.

To enable any of the settings listed on this page, change the associated enabled flag from false to true.

		agent.features:
  mysetting:
    enabled: true
		
	

Feature flag configuration settings

You can specify the following settings in the Feature Flag section of the elastic-agent.yml config file.

Fully qualified domain name (FQDN)

When enabled, information provided about the current host through the host.name key, in events produced by Elastic Agent, is in FQDN format (somehost.example.com rather than somehost). This helps you to distinguish between hosts on different domains that have similar names. With fqdn enabled, the fully qualified hostname allows each host to be more easily identified when viewed in Kibana.

Note

FQDN reporting is not currently supported in APM.

For FQDN reporting to work as expected, the hostname of the current host must either:

Have a CNAME entry defined in DNS.
Have one of its corresponding IP addresses respond successfully to a reverse DNS lookup.

If neither pre-requisite is satisfied, host.name continues to report the hostname of the current host as if the FQDN feature flag were not enabled.

To enable fully qualified domain names set enabled: true for the fqdn setting:

		agent.features:
  fqdn:
    enabled: true
		
	

Encrypted config

When enabled, the Elastic Agent encrypts the contents of elastic-agent.yml into fleet.enc. The contents of elastic-agent.yml are then replaced with this feature only to indicate that the encrypted config store is used.

Note

Fleet-managed Elastic Agents ignore this flag as they always encrypt storage.

To reload the config, replace the elastic-agent.yml file and restart the Elastic Agent.

To enable encrypted config for a standalone Elastic Agent, set enabled: true for the encrypted_config setting:

		agent.features:
  encrypted_config:
    enabled: true
		
	