Indices Metadata Plugin

Plugin for managing and retrieving metadata about indices in Kibana. This plugin collects and processes metadata from Elasticsearch indices, data streams, ILM policies, and index templates.

Overview

The Indices Metadata plugin is owned by the Security Solution team and provides:

1. Automated metadata collection — Runs scheduled tasks to gather indices metadata
2. Analytics integration — Sends telemetry events for indices statistics and configurations
3. Data stream monitoring — Tracks data streams and their associated metadata

Features

• Index Statistics Collection: Gathers comprehensive statistics about indices
• Data Stream Monitoring: Tracks data streams and their metadata
• ILM Policy Tracking: Monitors Index Lifecycle Management policies and statistics
• Index Template Management: Collects information about index templates
• Settings Monitoring: Retrieves and tracks index settings
• Task Scheduling: Runs collection tasks every 24 hours via Task Manager

Configuration

The plugin's configuration prefix is xpack.indicesMetadata

Plugin Configuration Options

• enabled: Whether the plugin is enabled (default: true)
• cdn.url — URL for artifact downloads
• cdn.publicKey — Public key for artifact verification
• cdn.requestTimeout — Timeout for CDN requests

Configuration Example

kibana.yml

xpack.indicesMetadata:
  enabled: false
  cdn:
    url: 'https://artifacts.elastic.co'
    publicKey: '...'
    requestTimeout: 30000

Dependencies

• Required Plugins: taskManager
• Owner: @elastic/security-solution

Development

This plugin is server-side only and depends on:

• Task Manager for scheduled metadata collection
• Analytics service for telemetry
• Elasticsearch client for metadata retrieval

See the Kibana contributing guide for instructions setting up your development environment.