Get started with system metrics

To follow the steps in this guide, you need an Elastic Stack deployment that includes:

• Elasticsearch for storing and searching data
• Kibana for visualizing and managing data
• Kibana user with All privileges on Fleet and Integrations. Since many Integrations assets are shared across spaces, users need the Kibana privileges in all spaces.
• Integrations Server (included by default in every Elastic Cloud Hosted deployment)

To get started quickly, create an Elastic Cloud Hosted deployment and host it on AWS, GCP, or Azure. Try it out for free.

The Admin role or higher is required to onboard system metrics data. To learn more, refer to Assign user roles and privileges.

Elastic Agent is a single, unified way to add monitoring for logs, metrics, and other types of data to a host. It can also protect hosts from security threats, query data from operating systems, forward data from remote services or hardware, and more. A single agent makes it easier and faster to deploy monitoring across your infrastructure. Each agent has a single policy you can update to add integrations for new data sources, security protections, and more.

In this step, add the System integration to monitor host logs and metrics.

1. Find Integrations in the main menu or use the global search field.

2. In the query bar, search for System and select the integration to see more details about it.

3. Click Add System.

4. Configure the integration name and optionally add a description. Make sure that Collect logs from System instances and Collect metrics from System instances are turned on.

5. Expand each configuration section to verify that the settings are correct for your host. For example, if you’re deploying Elastic Agent on macOS hosts, you need to add a new path to the System syslog logs section by clicking Add row and specifying /var/log/system.log.

   

6. Click Save and continue. This step takes a minute or two to complete. When it’s done, you’ll have an agent policy that contains a system integration policy for the configuration you just specified.

   

7. In the popup, click Add Elastic Agent to your hosts to open the Add agent flyout.

   Tip

   If you accidentally close the popup, go to Fleet > Agents, then click Add agent to access the flyout.

1. Create a new Elastic Observability Serverless project, or open an existing one.

2. In your Elastic Observability Serverless project, go to Project Settings → Integrations.

3. Type System in the search bar, then select the integration to see more details about it.

4. Click Add System.

5. Follow the in-product steps to install the System integration and deploy an Elastic Agent. The sequence of steps varies depending on whether you have already installed an integration.

   • When configuring the System integration, make sure that Collect metrics from System instances is turned on.
   • Expand each configuration section to verify that the settings are correct for your host. For example, you may want to turn on System core metrics to get a complete view of your infrastructure.

The Add agent flyout has two options: Enroll in Fleet and Run standalone. The default is to enroll the agents in Fleet, as this reduces the amount of work on the person managing the hosts by providing a centralized management tool in Kibana.

1. Skip the Select enrollment token step. The enrollment token you need is already selected.

   Note

   The enrollment token is specific to the Elastic Agent policy that you just created. When you run the command to enroll the agent in Fleet, you will pass in the enrollment token.

2. Download, install, and enroll the Elastic Agent on your host by selecting your host operating system and following the Install Elastic Agent on your host step.

   

It takes about a minute for Elastic Agent to enroll in Fleet, download the configuration specified in the policy you just created, and start collecting data.

Notice that you can also configure the integration to collect logs.