[role="xpack"] [[ml-configuring-aggregation]] === Aggregating data for faster performance By default, {dfeeds} fetch data from {es} using search and scroll requests. It can be significantly more efficient, however, to aggregate data in {es} and to configure your {anomaly-jobs} to analyze aggregated data. One of the benefits of aggregating data this way is that {es} automatically distributes these calculations across your cluster. You can then feed this aggregated data into the {ml-features} instead of raw results, which reduces the volume of data that must be considered while detecting anomalies. TIP: If you use a terms aggregation and the cardinality of a term is high, the aggregation might not be effective and you might want to just use the default search and scroll behavior. [discrete] [[aggs-limits-dfeeds]] ==== Requirements and limitations There are some limitations to using aggregations in {dfeeds}. Your aggregation must include a `date_histogram` aggregation, which in turn must contain a `max` aggregation on the time field. This requirement ensures that the aggregated data is a time series and the timestamp of each bucket is the time of the last record in the bucket. IMPORTANT: The name of the aggregation and the name of the field that the agg operates on need to match, otherwise the aggregation doesn't work. For example, if you use a `max` aggregation on a time field called `responsetime`, the name of the aggregation must be also `responsetime`. You must also consider the interval of the date histogram aggregation carefully. The bucket span of your {anomaly-job} must be divisible by the value of the `calendar_interval` or `fixed_interval` in your aggregation (with no remainder). If you specify a `frequency` for your {dfeed}, it must also be divisible by this interval. {anomaly-jobs-cap} cannot use date histograms with an interval measured in months because the length of the month is not fixed. {dfeeds-cap} tolerate weeks or smaller units. TIP: As a rule of thumb, if your detectors use <> or <> analytical functions, set the date histogram aggregation interval to a tenth of the bucket span. This suggestion creates finer, more granular time buckets, which are ideal for this type of analysis. If your detectors use <> or <> functions, set the interval to the same value as the bucket span. [discrete] [[aggs-include-jobs]] ==== Including aggregations in {anomaly-jobs} When you create or update an {anomaly-job}, you can include the names of aggregations, for example: [source,console] ---------------------------------- PUT _ml/anomaly_detectors/farequote { "analysis_config": { "bucket_span": "60m", "detectors": [{ "function": "mean", "field_name": "responsetime", <1> "by_field_name": "airline" <1> }], "summary_count_field_name": "doc_count" }, "data_description": { "time_field":"time" <1> } } ---------------------------------- // TEST[skip:setup:farequote_data] <1> The `airline`, `responsetime`, and `time` fields are aggregations. Only the aggregated fields defined in the `analysis_config` object are analyzed by the {anomaly-job}. NOTE: When the `summary_count_field_name` property is set to a non-null value, the job expects to receive aggregated input. The property must be set to the name of the field that contains the count of raw data points that have been aggregated. It applies to all detectors in the job. The aggregations are defined in the {dfeed} as follows: [source,console] ---------------------------------- PUT _ml/datafeeds/datafeed-farequote { "job_id":"farequote", "indices": ["farequote"], "aggregations": { "buckets": { "date_histogram": { "field": "time", "fixed_interval": "360s", "time_zone": "UTC" }, "aggregations": { "time": { <1> "max": {"field": "time"} }, "airline": { <2> "terms": { "field": "airline", "size": 100 }, "aggregations": { "responsetime": { <3> "avg": { "field": "responsetime" } } } } } } } } ---------------------------------- // TEST[skip:setup:farequote_job] <1> The aggregations have names that match the fields that they operate on. The `max` aggregation is named `time` and its field also needs to be `time`. <2> The `term` aggregation is named `airline` and its field is also named `airline`. <3> The `avg` aggregation is named `responsetime` and its field is also named `responsetime`. Your {dfeed} can contain multiple aggregations, but only the ones with names that match values in the job configuration are fed to the job. [discrete] [[aggs-dfeeds]] ==== Nested aggregations in {dfeeds} {dfeeds-cap} support complex nested aggregations. This example uses the `derivative` pipeline aggregation to find the first order derivative of the counter `system.network.out.bytes` for each value of the field `beat.name`. [source,js] ---------------------------------- "aggregations": { "beat.name": { "terms": { "field": "beat.name" }, "aggregations": { "buckets": { "date_histogram": { "field": "@timestamp", "fixed_interval": "5m" }, "aggregations": { "@timestamp": { "max": { "field": "@timestamp" } }, "bytes_out_average": { "avg": { "field": "system.network.out.bytes" } }, "bytes_out_derivative": { "derivative": { "buckets_path": "bytes_out_average" } } } } } } } ---------------------------------- // NOTCONSOLE [discrete] [[aggs-single-dfeeds]] ==== Single bucket aggregations in {dfeeds} {dfeeds-cap} not only supports multi-bucket aggregations, but also single bucket aggregations. The following shows two `filter` aggregations, each gathering the number of unique entries for the `error` field. [source,js] ---------------------------------- { "job_id":"servers-unique-errors", "indices": ["logs-*"], "aggregations": { "buckets": { "date_histogram": { "field": "time", "interval": "360s", "time_zone": "UTC" }, "aggregations": { "time": { "max": {"field": "time"} } "server1": { "filter": {"term": {"source": "server-name-1"}}, "aggregations": { "server1_error_count": { "value_count": { "field": "error" } } } }, "server2": { "filter": {"term": {"source": "server-name-2"}}, "aggregations": { "server2_error_count": { "value_count": { "field": "error" } } } } } } } } ---------------------------------- // NOTCONSOLE [discrete] [[aggs-define-dfeeds]] ==== Defining aggregations in {dfeeds} When you define an aggregation in a {dfeed}, it must have the following form: [source,js] ---------------------------------- "aggregations": { ["bucketing_aggregation": { "bucket_agg": { ... }, "aggregations": {] "data_histogram_aggregation": { "date_histogram": { "field": "time", }, "aggregations": { "timestamp": { "max": { "field": "time" } }, [,"": { "terms":{... } [,"aggregations" : { []+ } ] }] } } } } } ---------------------------------- // NOTCONSOLE The top level aggregation must be either a {ref}/search-aggregations-bucket.html[bucket aggregation] containing as single sub-aggregation that is a `date_histogram` or the top level aggregation is the required `date_histogram`. There must be exactly one `date_histogram` aggregation. For more information, see {ref}/search-aggregations-bucket-datehistogram-aggregation.html[Date histogram aggregation]. NOTE: The `time_zone` parameter in the date histogram aggregation must be set to `UTC`, which is the default value. Each histogram bucket has a key, which is the bucket start time. This key cannot be used for aggregations in {dfeeds}, however, because they need to know the time of the latest record within a bucket. Otherwise, when you restart a {dfeed}, it continues from the start time of the histogram bucket and possibly fetches the same data twice. The max aggregation for the time field is therefore necessary to provide the time of the latest record within a bucket. You can optionally specify a terms aggregation, which creates buckets for different values of a field. IMPORTANT: If you use a terms aggregation, by default it returns buckets for the top ten terms. Thus if the cardinality of the term is greater than 10, not all terms are analyzed. You can change this behavior by setting the `size` parameter. To determine the cardinality of your data, you can run searches such as: [source,js] -------------------------------------------------- GET .../_search { "aggs": { "service_cardinality": { "cardinality": { "field": "service" } } } } -------------------------------------------------- // NOTCONSOLE By default, {es} limits the maximum number of terms returned to 10000. For high cardinality fields, the query might not run. It might return errors related to circuit breaking exceptions that indicate that the data is too large. In such cases, do not use aggregations in your {dfeed}. For more information, see {ref}/search-aggregations-bucket-terms-aggregation.html[Terms aggregation]. You can also optionally specify multiple sub-aggregations. The sub-aggregations are aggregated for the buckets that were created by their parent aggregation. For more information, see {ref}/search-aggregations.html[Aggregations].