Migrate from Beats to Elastic Agent | Elastic Docs

The text explains the process of migrating from Beats, such as Filebeat and Metricbeat, to Elastic Agent, which is a unified solution for collecting logs, metrics, and providing security and threat prevention. Elastic Agent simplifies deployment and management by allowing users to configure a single agent policy instead of multiple configuration files for each Beat, offering centralized management through Kibana's Fleet, and providing endpoint protection. However, migrating to Elastic Agent involves certain limitations, such as the inability to configure the internal queue of Beats and the need to adapt existing configurations and custom dashboards for the new system. The document outlines steps for preparing and executing the migration, including setting up Fleet Server, deploying Elastic Agent, creating and managing agent policies, and eventually removing Beats to avoid redundant data and save storage space. The transition also involves adapting index lifecycle policies and potentially using index aliases to maintain custom dashboards while ensuring data streams are managed efficiently.