Elasticsearch (Search service)

Elasticsearch is a distributed RESTful search engine built for the cloud.

See the Elasticsearch documentation for more information.

Supported versions

From version 7.11 onward:

The following premium versions are supported:

• 8.5
• 7.17

You can select the major and minor version.

Patch versions are applied periodically for bug fixes and the like. When you deploy your app, you always get the latest available patches.

Deprecated versions

The following versions are still available in your projects for free, but they’re at their end of life and are no longer receiving security updates from upstream.

• 7.10
• 7.9
• 7.7
• 7.5
• 7.2
• 6.8
• 6.5
• 5.4
• 5.2
• 2.4
• 1.7
• 1.4

To ensure your project remains stable in the future, switch to a premium version.

Alternatively, you can switch to one of the latest, free versions of OpenSearch. To do so, follow the same procedure as for upgrading.

Relationship reference

Example information available through the PLATFORM_RELATIONSHIPS environment variable or by running upsun relationships.

Note that the information about the relationship can change when an app is redeployed or restarted or the relationship is changed. So your apps should only rely on the PLATFORM_RELATIONSHIPS environment variable directly rather than hard coding any values.

{
    "username": null,
    "scheme": "http",
    "service": "elasticsearch77",
    "fragment": null,
    "ip": "169.254.169.232",
    "hostname": "jmgjydr275pkj5v7prdj2asgxm.elasticsearch77.service._.eu-3.upsunapp.com",
    "port": 9200,
    "cluster": "rjify4yjcwxaa-master-7rqtwti",
    "host": "elasticsearch.internal",
    "rel": "elasticsearch",
    "path": null,
    "query": [],
    "password": "ChangeMe",
    "type": "elasticsearch:8.5",
    "public": false,
    "host_mapped": false
}

For premium versions, the service type is elasticsearch-enterprise.

Usage example

1. Configure the service

To define the service, use the elasticsearch type:

services:
    # The name of the service container. Must be unique within a project.
    <SERVICE_NAME>:
        type: elasticsearch:<VERSION>

If you’re using a premium version, use the elasticsearch-enterprise type instead.

Note that changing the name of the service replaces it with a brand new service and all existing data is lost. Back up your data before changing the service.

2. Add the relationship

To define the relationship, use the elasticsearch endpoint :

applications:
    # The name of the app container. Must be unique within a project.
    <APP_NAME>:
        # Relationships enable access from this app to a given service.
        relationships:
            <RELATIONSHIP_NAME>: "<SERVICE_NAME>:elasticsearch"

services:
    # The name of the service container. Must be unique within a project.
    <SERVICE_NAME>:
        type: elasticsearch:<VERSION>

You can define <SERVICE_NAME> and <RELATIONSHIP_NAME> as you like, but it’s best if they’re distinct. With this definition, the application container (<APP_NAME>) now has access to the service via the relationship <RELATIONSHIP_NAME>.

Example Configuration

App and Service configuration

applications:
    # The name of the app container. Must be unique within a project.
    myapp:
        # Relationships enable access from this app to a given service.
        relationships:
            essearch: "searchelastic:elasticsearch"

services:
    # The name of the service container. Must be unique within a project.
    searchelastic:
        type: elasticsearch:8.5

If you’re using a premium version, use the elasticsearch-enterprise type in the service definition.

Use in app

To use the configured service in your app, add a configuration file similar to the following to your project.

Note that configuration for premium versions may differ slightly.

applications:
    # The name of the app container. Must be unique within a project.
    myapp:
        # The location of the application's code.
        source:
            root: "myapp"
        # Other options...
        
        # Relationships enable an app container's access to a service.
        relationships:
            essearch: "searchelastic:elasticsearch"
services:
    # The name of the service container. Must be unique within a project.
    searchelastic:
        type: elasticsearch:8.5

This configuration defines a single application myapp, whose source code exists in the directory <PROJECT_ROOT>/myapp, and has been provided access to the service (searchelastic) via the relationship essearch.

From this, myapp can retrieve access credentials to the service through the environment variable PLATFORM_RELATIONSHIPS. That variable is a base64-encoded JSON object, but can be decoded at runtime (using the built-in tool jq) to provide more accessible environment variables to use within the application itself:

# Decode the built-in credentials object variable.
export RELATIONSHIPS_JSON=$(echo $PLATFORM_RELATIONSHIPS | base64 --decode)

# Set environment variables for individual credentials.
export ELASTIC_SCHEME=$(echo $RELATIONSHIPS_JSON | jq -r ".essearch[0].scheme")
export ELASTIC_HOST=$(echo $RELATIONSHIPS_JSON | jq -r ".essearch[0].host")
export ELASTIC_PORT=$(echo $RELATIONSHIPS_JSON | jq -r ".essearch[0].port")

# Surface more common Elasticsearch connection string variables for use in app.
export ELASTIC_USERNAME=$(echo $RELATIONSHIPS_JSON | jq -r ".essearch[0].username")
export ELASTIC_PASSWORD=$(echo $RELATIONSHIPS_JSON  | jq -r ".essearch[0].password")
export ELASTIC_HOSTS=[\"$ELASTIC_SCHEME://$ELASTIC_HOST:$ELASTIC_PORT\"]

The above file — .environment in the myapp directory — is automatically sourced by Upsun into the runtime environment, so that the variable ELASTIC_HOSTS can be used within the application to connect to the service.

Note that ELASTIC_HOSTS, and all Upsun-provided environment variables like PLATFORM_RELATIONSHIPS, are environment-dependent. Unlike the build produced for a given commit, they can’t be reused across environments and only allow your app to connect to a single service instance on a single environment.

A file very similar to this is generated automatically for your when using the upsun ify command to migrate a codebase to Upsun.

Authentication

By default, Elasticsearch has no authentication. No username or password is required to connect to it.

Starting with Elasticsearch 7.2 you may optionally enable HTTP Basic authentication. To do so, include the following in your .upsun/config.yaml configuration:

services:
    # The name of the service container. Must be unique within a project.
    search:
        type: elasticsearch:8.5
        configuration:
            authentication:
                enabled: true

If you’re using a premium version, use the elasticsearch-enterprise type.

That enables mandatory HTTP Basic auth on all requests. The credentials are available in any relationships that point at that service, in the username and password properties.

Note that the information about the relationship can change when an app is redeployed or restarted or the relationship is changed. So your apps should only rely on the PLATFORM_RELATIONSHIPS environment variable directly rather than hard coding any values.

This functionality is generally not required if Elasticsearch isn’t exposed on its own public HTTP route. However, certain applications may require it, or it allows you to safely expose Elasticsearch directly to the web. To do so, add a route to .upsun/config.yaml that has search:elasticsearch as its upstream (where search is whatever you named the service).

For example:

routes:
    "https://es.{default}/":
        type: upstream
        upstream: "search:elasticsearch"
        
services:
    # The name of the service container. Must be unique within a project.
    search:
        type: elasticsearch:8.5
        configuration:
            authentication:
                enabled: true

Plugins

Elasticsearch offers a number of plugins. To enable them, list them under the configuration.plugins key in your .upsun/config.yaml file, like so:

services:
    # The name of the service container. Must be unique within a project.
    search:
        type: elasticsearch:8.5
        configuration:
            plugins:
                - analysis-icu
                - lang-python

If you’re using a premium version, use the elasticsearch-enterprise type.

In this example you’d have the ICU analysis plugin and Python script support plugin.

If there is a publicly available plugin you need that isn’t listed here, contact support.

Available plugins

This is the complete list of official Elasticsearch plugins that can be enabled:

Plugin removal

Removing plugins previously added in your .upsun/config.yaml file doesn’t automatically uninstall them from your Elasticsearch instances. This is deliberate, as removing a plugin may result in data loss or corruption of existing data that relied on that plugin. Removing a plugin usually requires reindexing.

To permanently remove a previously enabled plugin, upgrade the service to create a new instance of Elasticsearch and migrate to it. In most cases it isn’t necessary as an unused plugin has no appreciable impact on the server.

Upgrading

The Elasticsearch data format sometimes changes between versions in incompatible ways. Elasticsearch doesn’t include a data upgrade mechanism as it’s expected that all indexes can be regenerated from stable data if needed. To upgrade (or downgrade) Elasticsearch, use a new service from scratch.

There are two ways to do so.

Destructive

In your .upsun/config.yaml file, change the version and name of your Elasticsearch service. Be sure to also update the reference to the now changed service name in it’s corresponding application’s relationship block.

When you push that to Upsun, the old service is deleted and a new one with the new name is created with no data. You can then have your application reindex data as appropriate.

This approach has the downsides of temporarily having an empty Elasticsearch instance, which your application may or may not handle gracefully, and needing to rebuild your index afterward. Depending on the size of your data that could take a while.

Transitional

With a transitional approach, you temporarily have two Elasticsearch services. Add a second Elasticsearch service with the new version, a new name, and give it a new relationship in .upsun/config.yaml. You can optionally run in that configuration for a while to allow your application to populate indexes in the new service as well.

Once you’re ready to switch over, remove the old Elasticsearch service and relationship. You may optionally have the new Elasticsearch service use the old relationship name if that’s easier for your app to handle. Your application is now using the new Elasticsearch service.

This approach has the benefit of never being without a working Elasticsearch instance. On the downside, it requires two running Elasticsearch servers temporarily, each of which consumes resources and needs adequate disk space. Depending on the size of your data, that may be a lot of disk space.