Run APM Server on Docker

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Docker images for APM Server are available from the Elastic Docker registry. The base image is ubuntu:22.04.

A list of all published Docker images and tags is available at www.docker.elastic.co.

These images are free to use under the Elastic license. They contain open source and free commercial features and access to paid commercial features. Start a 30-day trial to try out all of the paid commercial features. See the Subscriptions page for information about Elastic license levels.

Pull the image
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Obtaining APM Server for Docker is as simple as issuing a docker pull command against the Elastic Docker registry and then, optionally, verifying the image.

  1. Pull the Docker image:

    docker pull docker.elastic.co/apm/apm-server:8.15.5
  2. Verify the Docker image:

    wget https://artifacts.elastic.co/cosign.pub
    cosign verify --key cosign.pub docker.elastic.co/apm/apm-server:8.15.5

    The cosign command prints the check results and the signature payload in JSON format:

    Verification for docker.elastic.co/apm/apm-server:8.15.5 --
    The following checks were performed on each of these signatures:
      - The cosign claims were validated
      - Existence of the claims in the transparency log was verified offline
      - The signatures were verified against the specified public key
Configure APM Server on Docker
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The Docker image provides several methods for configuring APM Server. The conventional approach is to provide a configuration file via a volume mount, but it’s also possible to create a custom image with your configuration included.

Example configuration fileedit

Download this example configuration file as a starting point:

curl -L -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/elastic/apm-server/8.15/apm-server.docker.yml
Volume-mounted configurationedit

One way to configure APM Server on Docker is to provide apm-server.docker.yml via a volume mount. With docker run, the volume mount can be specified like this.

docker run -d \
  -p 8200:8200 \
  --name=apm-server \
  --user=apm-server \
  --volume="$(pwd)/apm-server.docker.yml:/usr/share/apm-server/apm-server.yml:ro" \
  docker.elastic.co/apm/apm-server:8.15.5 \
  --strict.perms=false -e \
  -E output.elasticsearch.hosts=["elasticsearch:9200"]  

Substitute your Elasticsearch hosts and ports.

If you are using the hosted Elasticsearch Service in Elastic Cloud, replace the -E output.elasticsearch.hosts line with the Cloud ID and elastic password using the syntax shown earlier.

Customize your configurationedit

The apm-server.docker.yml downloaded earlier should be customized for your environment. See Configure for more details. Edit the configuration file and customize it to match your environment then re-deploy your APM Server container.

Custom image configurationedit

It’s possible to embed your APM Server configuration in a custom image. Here is an example Dockerfile to achieve this:

FROM docker.elastic.co/apm/apm-server:8.15.5
COPY --chmod=0644 --chown=1000:1000 apm-server.yml /usr/share/apm-server/apm-server.yml