This section covers built-in alert types. For domain-specific alert types, refer to the documentation for that app.

    Currently Kibana provides one built-in alert type: the type.

    The index threshold alert type is designed to run an Elasticsearch query over indices, aggregating field values from documents, comparing them to threshold values, and scheduling actions to run when the thresholds are met.

    Creating the alert

    An index threshold alert can be created from the Create button in the . Fill in the general alert details, then select Index Threshold.

    Defining the conditions

    The index threshold has 5 clauses that define the condition to detect.

    Five clauses define the condition to detect

    Index

    This clause requires an index or index pattern and a time field that will be used for the time window.

    When

    This clause specifies how the value to be compared to the threshold is calculated. The value is calculated by aggregating a numeric field a the time window. The aggregation options are: , average, sum, min, and max. When using the document count is used, and an aggregation field is not necessary.

    Over/Grouped Over

    Threshold

    This clause defines a threshold value and a comparison operator (one of is above, is above or equals, is below, is below or equals, or ). The result of the aggregation is compared to this threshold.

    Time window

    This clause determines how far back to search for documents, using the time field set in the index clause. Generally this value should be to a value higher than the check every value in the general alert details, to avoid gaps in detection.

    If data is available and all clauses have been defined, a preview chart will render the threshold value and display a line chart showing the value for the last 30 intervals. This can provide an indication of recent values and their proximity to the threshold, and help you tune the clauses.

    In this section, you will use the Kibana to setup and tune the conditions on an index threshold alert. For this example, we want to detect when any of our top three sites have served more than 420,000 bytes over a 24 hour period.

    From the alert management UI, create a new alert, and fill in the . This alert will be checked every 4 hours, and will not execute actions more than once per day. Choose the index threshold alert type.

    Choosing an index threshold alert type

    Click on each clause to open a control that helps you set the value:

    Index clause

    The index clause control will list and allow you to search for available indices. Choose kibana_sample_data_logs

    Choosing a time field

    When clause

    We want to detect the number of bytes served during the time window, so we select sum as the aggregation, and bytes as the field to aggregate.

    Over/Grouped over clause

    We want to alert on the three sites that have the most traffic, so we’ll group the sum of bytes by the host.keyword field and take the top 3 values.

    Choosing the groups

    Threshold clause

    We want to alert when any site exceeds 420,000 bytes over a 24 hour period, so we’ll set the threshold to 420,000 and use the is above comparison.

    Time window clause

    Finally, set the time window to 24 hours to complete the alert configuration.

    Setting the time window

    The preview chart will render showing the 24 hour sum of bytes at 4 hours intervals (the check every interval) for the past 120 hours (the last 30 intervals).

    Comparing time windows

    You can interactively change the time window and observe the effect it has on the chart. Compare a 24 window to a 12 hour window. Notice the variability in the sum of bytes, due to different traffic levels during the day compared to at night. This variability would result in noisy alerts, so the 24 hour window is better. The preview chart can help you find the right values for your alert.