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[RFC] Host and Hostname fields - Stage 0 #1512

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112 changes: 112 additions & 0 deletions rfcs/text/0000-host-and-hostname-fields.md
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# 0000: host and hostname fields
<!-- Leave this ID at 0000. The ECS team will assign a unique, contiguous RFC number upon merging the initial stage of this RFC. -->

- Stage: **0 (strawperson)** <!-- Update to reflect target stage. See https://elastic.github.io/ecs/stages.html -->
- Date: **TBD** <!-- The ECS team sets this date at merge time. This is the date of the latest stage advancement. -->

<!--
As you work on your RFC, use the "Stage N" comments to guide you in what you should focus on, for the stage you're targeting.
Feel free to remove these comments as you go along.
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<!--
Stage 0: Provide a high level summary of the premise of these changes. Briefly describe the nature, purpose, and impact of the changes. ~2-5 sentences.
-->

Include host information (serial number, manufacturer, and model), bring hostname across other applicable fieldsets. These fields represent fields not currently represented in the ECS standard that we see in our data sources Tenable SC, Tanium, etc.) that we believe are important enough to create an ECS field to capture for our ELK Siem users.

<!--
Stage 1: If the changes include field additions or modifications, please create a folder titled as the RFC number under rfcs/text/. This will be where proposed schema changes as standalone YAML files or extended example mappings and larger source documents will go as the RFC is iterated upon.
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Stage X: Provide a brief explanation of why the proposal is being marked as abandoned. This is useful context for anyone revisiting this proposal or considering similar changes later on.
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## Fields

<!--
Stage 1: Describe at a high level how this change affects fields. Include new or updated yml field definitions for all of the essential fields in this draft. While not exhaustive, the fields documented here should be comprehensive enough to deeply evaluate the technical considerations of this change. The goal here is to validate the technical details for all essential fields and to provide a basis for adding experimental field definitions to the schema. Use GitHub code blocks with yml syntax formatting, and add them to the corresponding RFC folder.
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## Usage

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Stage 1: Describe at a high-level how these field changes will be used in practice. Real world examples are encouraged. The goal here is to understand how people would leverage these fields to gain insights or solve problems. ~1-3 paragraphs.
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## Source data

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Stage 1: Provide a high-level description of example sources of data. This does not yet need to be a concrete example of a source document, but instead can simply describe a potential source (e.g. nginx access log). This will ultimately be fleshed out to include literal source examples in a future stage. The goal here is to identify practical sources for these fields in the real world. ~1-3 sentences or unordered list.
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Stage 3: Add more real world example source documents so we have at least 2 total, but ideally 3. Format as described in stage 2.
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## Scope of impact

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## Concerns

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## People

The following are the people that consulted on the contents of this RFC.

* @hadadata59 | author

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## References

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### RFC Pull Requests

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* Stage 0: https://github.com/elastic/ecs/pull/NNN
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7 changes: 7 additions & 0 deletions rfcs/text/0000/agent.yml
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- name: agent
fields:
- name: hostname
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The agent.* fields are meant to describe the software entity collecting events on a host or observer. As a software entity, the agent.hostname field has been left out intentionally since the hostname is instead an attribute of a host.* or an observer.*.

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We have seen evidence of records (observer.) which report on a host (host.) and regarding the agent (agent.*) where the hostnames of each (observer, host, and agent) are unique.

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Do you have an example you'd be willing to share for this discussion?

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@ebeahan
Here is an anonymized representation of the event output from the agent (represented with 123) reporting on the HOST and the other agent deployed on the host (321).

application.reporting_agent.assetid GUID123_HOSTGUID
application.reporting_agent.endpoint.log.level INFO
application.reporting_agent.endpoint.product.version 2.7
host.broker_guid BROKERGUID
host.domain HOSTNAME.DOMAIN.COM
host.resident_agent.name HOSTNAME123
host.hostname HOSTNAME
host.id HOSTGUID
host.ip HOSTIP
reporting_agent.server HOSTNAME.DOMAIN.COM
reporting_agentguid GUID123
event.resident_agent.version 10.4
host.resident_agent_server.guid GUID321
host.resident_agent_server.name "HOSTNAMESVR321"
reporting_agent.server.name "HOSTNAMESVR123.DOMAIN.COM"

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Hi @hadadata59! Just catching up here and want to verify I understand correctly.

From your example, you have agent 123 and agent 321 and both run on the same host that they are monitoring?

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@kgeller yes. two agents, one host.

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Awesome.

So in this scenario, we would say we are receiving logs from both agent 123 and agent 321 about host 1? If so, could we not just populate the host.name field in both of those sets of logs from the agent?

I don't quite follow how, in this scenario, we'd need additional hostname fields.

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What are thoughts on leveraging the existing agent.name to capture the hostname?

For example, Beats does this as the default, unless overridden in the configuration: elastic/beats#18000

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This is a single log record (not sets of logs) where the box (host.hostname), the non-reporting 'resident' agent (?) and the reporting agent (agent.hostname) all provide unique hostnames in the record.

type: keyword
level: extended
description: The agent hostname.

7 changes: 7 additions & 0 deletions rfcs/text/0000/destination.yml
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- name: destination
fields:
- name: hostname
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With the source/destination/client/server field sets, the address value should populate the .address field and be duplicated to the appropriate field based on the value:.ip for IP addresses, .domain for FQDNs or hostnames.

I believe the .domain field serves the same function you're proposing here. Or do you have different motivations for proposing this addition?

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Using the example of somehost.example.com as a fully qualified domain name:
where some somehost is the hostname
and example.com is the domain name
See https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/dns/naming-conventions
There is general confusion when the FQDN can be both .domain as well as host.name.
The point here is to isolate the hostname (I.E. somehost), as well as the domain (.domain) for a more accurate and reliable representation of the data and for ease of user search.

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I think this addition can make sense here.

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Very early drafts of ECS did include source.hostname and destination.hostname fields, but the project later removed the fields. The discussion was that having both source.hostname and source.domain caused confusion, and arguably using hostname vs. host in a network-centric context was incorrect.

Here are some of the past conversations, if anyone's curious: #175 #84

Sometimes revisiting past decisions is valuable, though, of course! However, there would be a good bit of work to reassign the [source|destination|client|server].domain field's intent; this would be a significant breaking change for ECS.

type: keyword
level: extended
description: The destination hostname.

25 changes: 25 additions & 0 deletions rfcs/text/0000/host.yml
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- name: host
fields:
- name: model
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Capturing these types of inventory attributes has come up in past ECS discussions. One pitfall to avoid would be limiting them to certain field sets that wouldn't allow them to describe a broader range of assets someone might have in their inventory or CMDB.

Examples could be power supplies, generators, or server racks. These items would still have model, manufacturer, or serial_number attributes to capture but wouldn't necessarily still be considered hosts in the ECS sense of a host.

In past brainstorming, the idea of creating an inventory.* or asset.* field set has been suggested, but I think that idea would best be discussed as its own RFC.

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I am not sure I understand the distinction you're trying to make here. We have other lower level objects that are disimmilar (.name). Not sure why using a .model for host would preclude using a .model with a different description for another object would be problematic? The inventory. or asset. concept is still talking about an entity (a host), so it would be nice for context but it would also make my search problematic (E.G. if I needed to see a SW inventory on a host). In that case the fact that the scan came from tenable or my EDR host module would be the indicator that it was a point in time inventory vice an event with an associated host.

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I think what @ebeahan was trying to say was that in ECS, we describe host broadly as a 'general computing instance' meaning it can be anything from hardware to virtual machine to docker container, etc. The intention with a inventory.* or asset.* would be specifically a physical item we want to keep track of.

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Understood. 1.12 has container fields, so I think that we can not worry about that issue. As far as a VM, host.model would be hard to populate, as it is not a current vmware field I am aware of. But, serial_number and vendor are capturable and exist.
I think it's fine to move toward a new object level. I think knowing the host is a Dell ModelX Serial#Y in context of the OS the host is running etc. is valuable and you might lose some of that context in the record, but otherwise;
If the inventory or asset tag is the way forward, let's choose a path.

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I personally prefer asset, but I think the RFC process could certainly guide us towards a name. Is this something you are interested in leading?

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As I revisited and am rethinking my suggestion, I'm starting to think adding these fields under host.* as proposed may be the better option.

Like @hadadata59 mentioned, we already store asset details about a host, like architecture, OS details, geolocation data, underneath host.* fields already. We also explicitly list hardware as a host type without specifying that a piece of hardware must be compute hardware.

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As mentioned in #1512 (comment), I like the symmetry of using product over model to match the existing observer.product field naming.

type: keyword
level: extended
short: Model of the host.
example: "Latitude 5580"
description: >
The model associated with the host.

- name: manufacturer
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Thoughts about using vendor over manufacturer?

vendor provides symmetry with observer.vendor. Also, if someone had a specific use case to capture a host's ODM along with the vendor, I could see possible confusion over which one to place in the manufacturer field.

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we have been using vendor for software and manufacturer for hardware. However, I do not see a reason to object.

type: keyword
level: extended
short: Manufacturer of the host.
example: "Dell Inc."
description: >
The manufacturer associated with the host.

- name: serial_number
type: keyword
level: extended
short: Serial number of the host.
description: >
The serial number (unique identifier) associated with the host.

7 changes: 7 additions & 0 deletions rfcs/text/0000/source.yml
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- name: source
fields:
- name: hostname
type: keyword
level: extended
description: The source hostname.