Chainguard Container for elastic-agent

Elastic Agent is a unified agent for collecting, monitoring, and securing data across systems in the Elastic Stack.

Chainguard Containers are regularly-updated, secure-by-default container images.

Download this Container Image

For those with access, this container image is available on cgr.dev:

docker pull cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/elastic-agent:latest

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

Compatibility Notes

Chainguard's elastic-agent image is comparable to the external elastic-agent image, with the following key differences:

• The Chainguard image does not include the following binaries (normally located in /usr/share/elastic-agent/data/elastic-agent-buildhash/components/):

  • cloud-defend
  • endpoint-security
  • osqueryd
  • pf-elastic-collector
  • pf-elastic-symbolizer
  • pf-host-agent

• The Chainguard image does not store its binaries in /usr/share/elastic-agent/data/elastic-agent-buildhash/components/. Instead, it symlinks them from /usr/bin.

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

Getting Started

The elastic-agent image can be deployed using the official Elastic Agent Helm chart alongside the ECK Operator.

Start by retrieving credentials from an Elasticsearch deployment using the elastic ECK Operator. This example uses the secrets generated by the ECK quickstart guide.

PASSWORD=$(kubectl get secrets quickstart-es-elastic-user -o json |jq -r .data.elastic |base64 -d)
ES_API_KEY=$(kubectl exec -it quickstart-es-default-0 -n default -- \
curl -k -u elastic:$PASSWORD -s -X POST "https://localhost:9200/_security/api_key" \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    -d '{"name":"my-api-key","role_descriptors":{"custom_role":{"cluster":["all"],"index":[{"names":["*"],"privileges":["all"]}]}}}' | jq -r .api_key)

Next, create a values.yaml file:

kubernetes:
  enabled: true

outputs:
  elasticsearch:
    type: ESPlainAuthAPI
    url: https://quickstart-es-http:9200
    username: elastic
    password: "$PASSWORD"
    api_key: "$ES_API_KEY"
  default:
    url: https://quickstart-es-http:9200
    username: elastic

    password: "$PASSWORD"
agent:
  imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
  image:
    repository: "<YOUR_IMAGE_REGISTRY>"
    tag: "<YOUR_IMAGE_TAG>"

Finally, deploy the elastic-agent Helm chart using the values.yaml file:

git clone https://github.com/elastic/elastic-agent.git
helm install demo ./elastic-agent/deploy/helm/elastic-agent -f values.yaml

Documentation and Resources

Refer to the official Elastic Agent documentation and the official Elastic Agent repository for more information.

Deploy elastic-agent using the official Elastic Agent helm chart.

What are Chainguard Containers?

Chainguard Containers are minimal container images that are secure by default.

In many cases, the Chainguard Containers tagged as :latest contain only an open-source application and its runtime dependencies. These minimal container images typically do not contain a shell or package manager. Chainguard Containers are built with Wolfi, our Linux undistro designed to produce container images that meet the requirements of a more secure software supply chain.

The main features of Chainguard Containers include:

• Minimal design, without unnecessary software bloat
• Daily builds to ensure container images are up-to-date with available security patches
• High quality build-time SBOMs attesting to the provenance of all artifacts within the image
• Verifiable signatures provided by Sigstore
• Reproducible builds with Cosign and apko (read more about reproducibility)

For cases where you need container images with shells and package managers to build or debug, most Chainguard Containers come paired with a -dev variant.

Although the -dev container image variants have similar security features as their more minimal versions, they feature additional software that is typically not necessary in production environments. We recommend using multi-stage builds to leverage the -dev variants, copying application artifacts into a final minimal container that offers a reduced attack surface that won’t allow package installations or logins.

Learn More

To better understand how to work with Chainguard Containers, please visit Chainguard Academy and Chainguard Courses.

In addition to Containers, Chainguard offers VMs and Libraries. Contact Chainguard to access additional products.

Trademarks

This software listing is packaged by Chainguard. The trademarks set forth in this offering are owned by their respective companies, and use of them does not imply any affiliation, sponsorship, or endorsement by such companies.