This plugin can manage indexes per time-frame, as commonly done in other tools with Elasticsearch.
The timestamp of the metric collected will be used to decide the index destination.
For more information about this usage on Elasticsearch, check https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/guide/master/time-based.html#index-per-timeframe
### Template management
Index templates are used in Elasticsearch to define settings and mappings for the indexes and how the fields should be analyzed.
For more information on how this works, see https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/indices-templates.html
This plugin can create a working template for use with telegraf metrics. It uses Elasticsearch dynamic templates feature to set proper types for the tags and metrics fields.
If the template specified already exists, it will not overwrite unless you configure this plugin to do so. Thus you can customize this template after its creation if necessary.
Additionally, you can specify dynamic index names by using tags with the notation ```{{tag_name}}```. This will store the metrics with different tag values in different indices. If the tag does not exist in a particular metric, the `default_tag_value` will be used instead.
*`timeout`: Elasticsearch client timeout, defaults to "5s" if not set.
*`enable_sniffer`: Set to true to ask Elasticsearch a list of all cluster nodes, thus it is not necessary to list all nodes in the urls config option.
*`health_check_interval`: Set the interval to check if the nodes are available, in seconds. Setting to 0 will disable the health check (not recommended in production).
*`username`: The username for HTTP basic authentication details (eg. when using Shield).
*`password`: The password for HTTP basic authentication details (eg. when using Shield).
*`manage_template`: Set to true if you want telegraf to manage its index template. If enabled it will create a recommended index template for telegraf indexes.
*`template_name`: The template name used for telegraf indexes.
*`overwrite_template`: Set to true if you want telegraf to overwrite an existing template.
Integer values collected that are bigger than 2^63 and smaller than 1e21 (or in this exact same window of their negative counterparts) are encoded by golang JSON encoder in decimal format and that is not fully supported by Elasticsearch dynamic field mapping. This causes the metrics with such values to be dropped in case a field mapping has not been created yet on the telegraf index. If that's the case you will see an exception on Elasticsearch side like this:
```{"error":{"root_cause":[{"type":"mapper_parsing_exception","reason":"failed to parse"}],"type":"mapper_parsing_exception","reason":"failed to parse","caused_by":{"type":"illegal_state_exception","reason":"No matching token for number_type [BIG_INTEGER]"}},"status":400}```
The correct field mapping will be created on the telegraf index as soon as a supported JSON value is received by Elasticsearch, and subsequent insertions will work because the field mapping will already exist.
This issue is caused by the way Elasticsearch tries to detect integer fields, and by how golang encodes numbers in JSON. There is no clear workaround for this at the moment.