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Deploy an Elasticsearch cluster

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Deploy an Elasticsearch cluster

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To deploy a simple {es}] cluster specification, with one Elasticsearch node:

cat <<EOF | kubectl apply -f -
apiVersion: elasticsearch.k8s.elastic.co/v1
kind: Elasticsearch
metadata:
  name: quickstart
spec:
  version: 8.16.1
  nodeSets:
  - name: default
    count: 1
    config:
      node.store.allow_mmap: false
EOF

The operator automatically creates and manages Kubernetes resources to achieve the desired state of the Elasticsearch cluster. It may take up to a few minutes until all the resources are created and the cluster is ready for use.

Setting node.store.allow_mmap: false has performance implications and should be tuned for production workloads as described in the Virtual memory section.

If your Kubernetes cluster does not have any Kubernetes nodes with at least 2GiB of free memory, the pod will be stuck in Pending state. Check Manage compute resources for more information about resource requirements and how to configure them.

The cluster that you deployed in this quickstart guide only allocates a persistent volume of 1GiB for storage using the default storage class defined for the Kubernetes cluster. You will most likely want to have more control over this for production workloads. Refer to Volume claim templates for more information.

For a full description of each CustomResourceDefinition (CRD), refer to the API Reference or view the CRD files in the project repository. You can also retrieve information about a CRD from the cluster. For example, describe the Elasticsearch CRD specification with describe:

kubectl describe crd elasticsearch

Monitor cluster health and creation progress

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Get an overview of the current Elasticsearch clusters in the Kubernetes cluster with get, including health, version and number of nodes:

kubectl get elasticsearch

When you first create the Kubernetes cluster, there is no HEALTH status and the PHASE is empty. After the pod and service start-up, the PHASE turns into Ready, and HEALTH becomes green. The HEALTH status comes from Elasticsearch’s cluster health API.

NAME          HEALTH    NODES     VERSION   PHASE         AGE
quickstart              1         8.16.1               1s

While the Elasticsearch pod is in the process of being started it will report Pending as checked with get:

kubectl get pods --selector='elasticsearch.k8s.elastic.co/cluster-name=quickstart'

Which will output similar to:

NAME                      READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
quickstart-es-default-0   0/1     Pending   0          9s

During and after start-up, up that pod’s logs can be accessed:

kubectl logs -f quickstart-es-default-0

Once the pod has finished coming up, our original get request will now report:

NAME          HEALTH    NODES     VERSION   PHASE         AGE
quickstart    green     1         8.16.1     Ready         1m

Request Elasticsearch access

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A ClusterIP Service is automatically created for your cluster as checked with get:

kubectl get service quickstart-es-http

Which will output similar to:

NAME                 TYPE        CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)    AGE
quickstart-es-http   ClusterIP   10.15.251.145   <none>        9200/TCP   34m

In order to make requests to the Elasticsearch API:

Get the credentials.

By default, a user named elastic is created with the password stored inside a Kubernetes secret. This default user can be disabled if desired, refer to Users and roles for more information.
```
PASSWORD=$(kubectl get secret quickstart-es-elastic-user -o go-template='{{.data.elastic | base64decode}}')
```
Request the Elasticsearch root API. You can do so from inside the Kubernetes cluster or from your local workstation. For demonstration purposes, certificate verification is disabled using the -k curl flag; however, this is not recommended outside of testing purposes. Refer to Setup your own certificate for more information.
- From inside the Kubernetes cluster:
```
curl -u "elastic:$PASSWORD" -k "https://quickstart-es-http:9200"
```
- From your local workstation:
  1. Use the following command in a separate terminal:
    
    kubectl port-forward service/quickstart-es-http 9200
  2. Request localhost:
    
    curl -u "elastic:$PASSWORD" -k "https://localhost:9200"

This completes the quickstart of deploying an Elasticsearch cluster. We recommend continuing to Deploy a Kibana instance but for more configuration options as needed, navigate to Running Elasticsearch on ECK.

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