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<div><h1 class="title"><a id="id-1"></a>Configure the File output</h1><a class="edit_me" rel="nofollow" title="Edit this page on GitHub" href="https://github.com/elastic/apm-server/edit/7.11/docs/copied-from-beats/outputs/fileout/docs/fileout.asciidoc">edit</a></div>
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<div class="position-relative"><h2 class="title"><a id="file-output"></a>Configure the File output</h2><a class="edit_me" rel="nofollow" title="Edit this page on GitHub" href="https://github.com/elastic/apm-server/edit/7.11/docs/copied-from-beats/outputs/fileout/docs/fileout.asciidoc">edit</a></div>
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<p>The File output dumps the transactions into a file where each transaction is in a JSON format.
Currently, this output is used for testing, but it can be used as input for
Logstash.</p>
<p>To use this output, edit the APM Server configuration file to disable the Elasticsearch
output by commenting it out, and enable the file output by adding <code class="literal">output.file</code>.</p>
<p>Example configuration:</p>
<div class="pre_wrapper lang-yaml">
<div class="console_code_copy" title="Copy to clipboard"></div>
<pre class="programlisting prettyprint lang-yaml">output.file:
  path: "/tmp/apm-server"
  filename: apm-server
  #rotate_every_kb: 10000
  #number_of_files: 7
  #permissions: 0600</pre>
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<div class="position-relative"><h3 class="title"><a id="_configuration_options_8"></a>Configuration options</h3><a class="edit_me" rel="nofollow" title="Edit this page on GitHub" href="https://github.com/elastic/apm-server/edit/7.11/docs/copied-from-beats/outputs/fileout/docs/fileout.asciidoc">edit</a></div>
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<p>You can specify the following <code class="literal">output.file</code> options in the <code class="literal">apm-server.yml</code> config file:</p>
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<div class="position-relative"><h4 class="title"><a id="_enabled_7"></a><code class="literal">enabled</code></h4><a class="edit_me" rel="nofollow" title="Edit this page on GitHub" href="https://github.com/elastic/apm-server/edit/7.11/docs/copied-from-beats/outputs/fileout/docs/fileout.asciidoc">edit</a></div>
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<p>The enabled config is a boolean setting to enable or disable the output. If set
to false, the output is disabled.</p>
<p>The default value is <code class="literal">true</code>.</p>
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<div class="position-relative"><h4 class="title"><a id="path"></a><code class="literal">path</code></h4><a class="edit_me" rel="nofollow" title="Edit this page on GitHub" href="https://github.com/elastic/apm-server/edit/7.11/docs/copied-from-beats/outputs/fileout/docs/fileout.asciidoc">edit</a></div>
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<p>The path to the directory where the generated files will be saved. This option is
mandatory.</p>
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<div class="position-relative"><h4 class="title"><a id="_filename"></a><code class="literal">filename</code></h4><a class="edit_me" rel="nofollow" title="Edit this page on GitHub" href="https://github.com/elastic/apm-server/edit/7.11/docs/copied-from-beats/outputs/fileout/docs/fileout.asciidoc">edit</a></div>
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<p>The name of the generated files. The default is set to the Beat name. For example, the files
generated by default for APM Server would be "apm-server", "apm-server.1", "apm-server.2", and so on.</p>
</div>

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<div class="titlepage"><div><div>
<div class="position-relative"><h4 class="title"><a id="_rotate_every_kb"></a><code class="literal">rotate_every_kb</code></h4><a class="edit_me" rel="nofollow" title="Edit this page on GitHub" href="https://github.com/elastic/apm-server/edit/7.11/docs/copied-from-beats/outputs/fileout/docs/fileout.asciidoc">edit</a></div>
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<p>The maximum size in kilobytes of each file. When this size is reached, the files are
rotated. The default value is 10240 KB.</p>
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<div class="position-relative"><h4 class="title"><a id="_number_of_files"></a><code class="literal">number_of_files</code></h4><a class="edit_me" rel="nofollow" title="Edit this page on GitHub" href="https://github.com/elastic/apm-server/edit/7.11/docs/copied-from-beats/outputs/fileout/docs/fileout.asciidoc">edit</a></div>
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<p>The maximum number of files to save under <a class="xref" href="file-output.html#path" title="path"><code class="literal">path</code></a>. When this number of files is reached, the
oldest file is deleted, and the rest of the files are shifted from last to first.
The number of files must be between 2 and 1024. The default is 7.</p>
</div>

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<div class="position-relative"><h4 class="title"><a id="_permissions"></a><code class="literal">permissions</code></h4><a class="edit_me" rel="nofollow" title="Edit this page on GitHub" href="https://github.com/elastic/apm-server/edit/7.11/docs/copied-from-beats/outputs/fileout/docs/fileout.asciidoc">edit</a></div>
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<p>Permissions to use for file creation. The default is 0600.</p>
</div>

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<div class="position-relative"><h4 class="title"><a id="_codec_3"></a><code class="literal">codec</code></h4><a class="edit_me" rel="nofollow" title="Edit this page on GitHub" href="https://github.com/elastic/apm-server/edit/7.11/docs/copied-from-beats/outputs/fileout/docs/fileout.asciidoc">edit</a></div>
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<p>Output codec configuration. If the <code class="literal">codec</code> section is missing, events will be json encoded.</p>
<p>See <a class="xref" href="configuration-output-codec.html" title="Change the output codec">Change the output codec</a> for more information.</p>
</div>

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