We're running into the same issue everyone else seems to have with Elastic's agent on Server 2012 R2. The official stance is "supported," but the reality in our environment is anything but. Random agent crashes, failure to report in for hours, and the Kibana dashboard showing a healthy agent one minute and a dead one the next.
I need to know what others are actually doing in production. The obvious answer is "upgrade your OS," but that's a multi-year project for us, not a solution for next quarter. We're currently evaluating:
* **Forced upgrade paths:** Are you using the Elastic agent at all, or have you fallen back to the legacy Beats? If Beats, which version actually stays running?
* **Workarounds:** Specific agent version that's less flaky? We're on 8.13.x and it's unreliable. Did you have to disable certain integrations or security features?
* **Alternative monitoring:** Did you give up and deploy a separate, lightweight agent just for these legacy boxes? If so, what's the cost and management overhead?
I'm particularly skeptical of any "it just works" claims. What are the exact configs, version numbers, and failure rates you're seeing? The vendor documentation is, predictably, vague on the specifics of legacy system quirks.
- Ray