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Confirm that your Elasticsearch instance is running and gather the details needed to connect from Grafana.

Estimated time: 2 min

Verify Elasticsearch is accessible

Before you connect Grafana to Elasticsearch, confirm that your Elasticsearch instance is running and that you have the information Grafana needs to establish a connection.

Gather connection details

Collect the following values before proceeding:

DetailRequiredExample
URLYeshttp://elasticsearch.example.com:9200
Index nameRecommendedlogs-* or [filebeat-]YYYY.MM.DD
Time field nameNo (defaults to @timestamp)@timestamp
AuthenticationDepends on your setupUsername and password, or API key

The URL is the only required connection value. Index name and Time field name are optional Elasticsearch details — Grafana defaults the time field to @timestamp — but setting them makes querying easier. The Elasticsearch data source supports v7.17 or later, v8.x, v9.x, and Elastic Cloud Serverless.

Verify connectivity

Confirm Elasticsearch is reachable by running this command from your terminal:

Bash 
curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" http://YOUR_ELASTICSEARCH_HOST:9200

A 200 response confirms that Elasticsearch is accepting connections. If your instance requires authentication, add credentials with -u username:password or an API key header.

If Elasticsearch is behind a firewall: You’ll need Private data source connect (PDC) to allow Grafana Cloud to reach it. Set up PDC before continuing.

Confirm read permissions

When Elasticsearch security features are enabled, the user or API key that Grafana connects with needs the following cluster privileges:

  • monitor — Retrieves version information for the connected Elasticsearch instance.
  • view_index_metadata — Accesses the mapping definitions of indices.
  • read — Performs search and retrieval operations on indices.

Security tip: Scope the credentials to the minimum privileges Grafana needs — read access to the indices you want to query. Refer to Configure the Elasticsearch data source for details.

In the next milestone, you’ll add Elasticsearch as a data source in Grafana Cloud.