elastic-connectors

packaged by Chainguard

Chainguard Container for elastic-connectors

Elastic Connectors is the self-managed connector service that syncs data from third-party sources into Elasticsearch.

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-connectors: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 a drop-in replacement for the upstream Elastic Connectors image, docker.elastic.co/integrations/elastic-connectors. That repository carries every stream, including 8.19 -- 8.19.23 is served there under the same digest as in the pre-9.0 docker.elastic.co/enterprise-search/elastic-connectors, which is now legacy.

What stays the same is what matters for drop-in use:

• No ENTRYPOINT and no CMD, exactly as upstream. The service is always named explicitly, so the invocations in Elastic's own docs work unchanged.
• /app/bin resolves to the service virtualenv, and the working directory is /app.

The differences:

• Runs as nonroot. Upstream runs as root; this runs as uid 65532. Mounted configuration must be readable by that user.
• No shell or package manager. Upstream builds FROM wolfi/python:3.11-dev, so it carries sh, apk, pip and python on PATH; this image carries none of them. Use the -dev variant if you need a shell.
• No upstream source tree. Upstream copies the repository to /app (Dockerfile, LICENSE, test fixtures, and on 8.19 a default /app/config.yml); here /app holds only the entry points and the virtualenv, so always pass the config path (-c, --connector-service-config).
• The entry points are also on PATH. elastic-ingest, connectors and elastic-agent-connectors work as bare commands in addition to the upstream /app/bin paths. This one is additive -- the upstream paths are unchanged.

The virtualenv sits at a different path per stream, because 8.19 predates Elastic's monorepo restructure: /app/.venv on 8.19 and /app/app/connectors_service/.venv on 9.5. /app/bin points at the right one on both, which is why Elastic's documentation uses it.

Prerequisites

A reachable Elasticsearch deployment, and a connector configured in Kibana. See Elastic's self-managed connectors documentation.

Getting Started

Create a directory for the configuration file and write a minimal config.yml:

mkdir -p connectors-config
cat > connectors-config/config.yml <<'EOF'
elasticsearch:
  host: http://elasticsearch:9200
  api_key: <ELASTICSEARCH_API_KEY>

connectors:
  - connector_id: <CONNECTOR_ID_FROM_KIBANA>
    service_type: <SERVICE_TYPE_FROM_KIBANA>
    api_key: <API_KEY_FROM_KIBANA>
EOF

Then run the service, mounting that directory:

Upstream runs the service on a user-defined network alongside Elasticsearch. Creating the network is not enough on its own -- Elasticsearch has to join it under the hostname used in config.yml, or the service loops on Cannot connect to host elasticsearch:9200 [Name or service not known]:

docker network create elastic
docker network connect --alias elasticsearch elastic <ELASTICSEARCH_CONTAINER>

docker run --rm --network elastic -v "$(pwd)/connectors-config:/config" \
  cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/elastic-connectors:latest \
  /app/bin/elastic-ingest -c /config/config.yml

The service is named explicitly because the image has no entrypoint, matching upstream.

To see which connectors the image ships, without contacting Elasticsearch:

docker run --rm --network elastic -v "$(pwd)/connectors-config:/config" \
  cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/elastic-connectors:latest \
  /app/bin/elastic-ingest -c /config/config.yml --action list

To print a connector's configuration schema, which is a good way to discover the fields a given service_type expects:

docker run --rm --network elastic -v "$(pwd)/connectors-config:/config" \
  cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/elastic-connectors:latest \
  /app/bin/elastic-ingest -c /config/config.yml --action config --service-type mysql

The image also ships the connectors CLI for managing connectors and sync jobs:

docker run --rm --network elastic -v "$(pwd)/connectors-config:/config" \
  cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/elastic-connectors:latest \
  /app/bin/connectors --config /config/config.yml connector list

Configuration

Everything is driven by the mounted config.yml; the image sets no application-specific environment variables.

When Elasticsearch uses a certificate from a private CA, point the service at the CA bundle rather than disabling verification. Mount the CA alongside the config and reference it:

elasticsearch:
  host: https://elasticsearch:9200
  api_key: <ELASTICSEARCH_API_KEY>
  ssl: true
  ca_certs: /config/ca.crt

verify_certs defaults to true once ssl is enabled, so pinning ca_certs is all that is needed. Disabling verification is supported upstream but leaves the connection open to interception, so prefer the CA bundle.

Because the container runs as uid 65532, the mounted files must be readable by that user. connectors connector create --update-config is the exception that also needs write access: it appends the new connector to the file passed as --connector-service-config and rewrites it in place.

Documentation and Resources

• Elastic Connectors documentation
• Running the connector service in Docker
• Connectors CLI reference
• Configuration reference
• Upstream source

What are Chainguard Containers?

Chainguard's free tier of Starter container images are built with Wolfi, our minimal Linux undistro.

All other Chainguard Containers are built with Chainguard OS, Chainguard's minimal Linux operating system 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 development, or -dev, variant.

In all other cases, including Chainguard Containers tagged as :latest or with a specific version number, the container images include only an open-source application and its runtime dependencies. These minimal container images typically do not contain a shell or package manager.

Although the -dev container image variants have similar security features as their more minimal versions, they include additional software that is typically not necessary in production environments. We recommend using multi-stage builds to copy artifacts from the -dev variant into a more minimal production image.

Need additional packages?

To improve security, Chainguard Containers include only essential dependencies. Need more packages? Chainguard customers can use Custom Assembly to add packages, either through the Console, chainctl, or API.

To use Custom Assembly in the Chainguard Console: navigate to the image you'd like to customize in your Organization's list of images, and click on the Customize image button at the top of the page.

Learn More

Refer to our Chainguard Containers documentation on Chainguard Academy. Chainguard also offers VMs and Libraries — contact us for access.

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