Chainguard Image for apm-server-fips

Elastic APM is an application performance monitoring system built on the Elastic Stack.

Chainguard Images are regularly-updated, minimal container images with low-to-zero CVEs.

Download this Image

This image is available on cgr.dev:

docker pull cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/apm-server-fips:latest

Be sure to replace the ORGANIZATION placeholder with the name used for your organization's private repository within the Chainguard registry.

Compatibility Notes

This image is comptible with upstream image. Switching to Chainguard image should not require any changes to your existing setup.

FIPS Support

The apm-server-fips Chainguard Image ships with a validated redistribution of the OpenSSL's FIPS provider module. For more on FIPS support in Chainguard Images, consult the guide on FIPS-enabled Chainguard Images on Chainguard Academy.

Getting Started

To start the Chainguard apm-server image, simply start the container - such as:

docker run --rm cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/apm-server-fips:latest version
apm-server version 8.17.1 (linux/amd64) [cff9e464471f4e641164cb38215a18e899784b37 2025-01-10 16:05:01 +0000 UTC (modified)]

APM server requires configuration to be able to communicate with other services, such as Elasticsearch and Kibana. These can be passed via command line, as well as via configuration file.

For example to pass details via command line:

docker run -p 8200:8200 cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/apm-server-fips:latest \
  -E output.elasticsearch.hosts=elasticsearch:9200 \
  -E output.elasticsearch.username=$ELASTIC_USER \
  -E output.elasticsearch.password=$ELASTIC_PASSWORD \
  -E apm-server.host=:8200 \
  -E apm-server.kibana.host="kibana:5601" \

After which is should be possible to communicate with apm-server and check its status by checking http://localhost:8200 URL.

A sample answer for a working APM server should be:

{
  "build_date": "2025-01-30T22:07:00Z",
  "build_sha": "cff9e464471f4e641164cb38215a18e899784b37",
  "publish_ready": true,
  "version": "8.17.1"
}

Run Chainguard image with Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes (ECK)

This image can be run as part of Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes (ECK) deployments of Elasticsearch and Kibana.

To get started, add the Helm repository - such as:

helm repo add elastic https://helm.elastic.co
helm repo update

Next, install the eck-operator - such as:

helm install elastic-operator elastic/eck-operator -n elastic-system --create-namespace

Then create an instance of Elasticsearch and Kibana

kubectl apply -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: elasticsearch.k8s.elastic.co/v1
kind: Elasticsearch
metadata:
  name: quickstart
spec:
  version: VERSION
---
apiVersion: kibana.k8s.elastic.co/v1
kind: Kibana
metadata:
  name: quickstart
spec:
  version: VERSION
  count: 1
  elasticsearchRef:
    name: quickstart
EOF

Be sure to replace the ORGANIZATION placeholder with the name used for your organization's private repository within the Chainguard registry as well as replace VERSION placeholder with the version of Elasticsearch and Kibana - such as 8.17.1.

Next, deploy APM server, specifying the image in its spec - such as:

kubectl apply -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: apm.k8s.elastic.co/v1
kind: ApmServer
metadata:
  name: apm-server-quickstart
  namespace: default
spec:
  version: VERSION
  count: 1
  image: cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/apm-server-fips:latest
  elasticsearchRef:
    name: quickstart
  kibanaRef:
    name: quickstart

Be sure to replace the ORGANIZATION placeholder with the name used for your organization's private repository within the Chainguard registry as well as replace VERSION placeholder with the version of APM Server - such as 8.17.1.

The ECK operator will set up the APM server and configure it to communicate with Elasticsearch and Kibana.

Documentation and Resources

Refer to upstream Get started with APM documentation to learn more about usage of APM Server and this image.

Please refer to Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes (ECK) documentation for more details on how to set up and operate it.

Contact Support

If you have a Zendesk account (typically set up for you by your Customer Success Manager) you can reach out to Chainguard's Customer Success team through our Zendesk portal.

What are Chainguard Images?

Chainguard Images are a collection of container images designed for security and minimalism.

Many Chainguard Images are distroless; they contain only an open-source application and its runtime dependencies. These images do not even contain a shell or package manager. Chainguard Images are built with Wolfi, our Linux undistro designed to produce container images that meet the requirements of a secure software supply chain.

The main features of Chainguard Images include:

• Minimal design, with no unnecessary software bloat
• Automated nightly builds to ensure Images are completely up-to-date and contain all available security patches
• High quality build-time SBOMs (software bills of materials) attesting the provenance of all artifacts within the Image
• Verifiable signatures provided by Sigstore
• Reproducible builds with Cosign and apko (read more about reproducibility)

-dev Variants

As mentioned previously, Chainguard’s distroless Images have no shell or package manager by default. This is great for security, but sometimes you need these things, especially in builder images. For those cases, most (but not all) Chainguard Images come paired with a -dev variant which does include a shell and package manager.

Although the -dev image variants have similar security features as their distroless versions, such as complete SBOMs and signatures, they feature additional software that is typically not necessary in production environments. The general recommendation is to use the -dev variants only to build the application and then copy all application artifacts into a distroless image, which will result in a final container image that has a minimal attack surface and won’t allow package installations or logins.

That being said, it’s worth noting that -dev variants of Chainguard Images are completely fine to run in production environments. After all, the -dev variants are still more secure than many popular container images based on fully-featured operating systems such as Debian and Ubuntu since they carry less software, follow a more frequent patch cadence, and offer attestations for what they include.

Learn More

To better understand how to work with Chainguard Images, we encourage you to visit Chainguard Academy, our documentation and education platform.