IMPORTANT: No additional bug fixes or documentation updates will be released for this version. For the latest information, see the current release documentation.

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What is Elasticsearch?

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What is Elasticsearch?

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Elasticsearch is a distributed search and analytics engine, scalable data store, and vector database built on Apache Lucene. It’s optimized for speed and relevance on production-scale workloads. Use Elasticsearch to search, index, store, and analyze data of all shapes and sizes in near real time.

Elasticsearch has a lot of features. Explore the full list on the product webpage.

Elasticsearch is the heart of the Elastic Stack and powers the Elastic Search, Observability and Security solutions.

Elasticsearch is used for a wide and growing range of use cases. Here are a few examples:

Monitor log and event data. Store logs, metrics, and event data for observability and security information and event management (SIEM).
Build search applications. Add search capabilities to apps or websites, or build enterprise search engines over your organization’s internal data sources.
Vector database. Store and search vectorized data, and create vector embeddings with built-in and third-party natural language processing (NLP) models.
Retrieval augmented generation (RAG). Use Elasticsearch as a retrieval engine to augment Generative AI models.
Application and security monitoring. Monitor and analyze application performance and security data effectively.
Machine learning. Use machine learning to automatically model the behavior of your data in real-time.

This is just a sample of search, observability, and security use cases enabled by Elasticsearch. Refer to our customer success stories for concrete examples across a range of industries.

Deployment options

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To use Elasticsearch, you need a running instance of the Elasticsearch service. You can deploy Elasticsearch in various ways:

Local dev. Get started quickly with a minimal local Docker setup.
Elastic Cloud. Elasticsearch is available as part of our hosted Elastic Stack offering, deployed in the cloud with your provider of choice. Sign up for a 14 day free trial.
Elastic Cloud Serverless (technical preview). Create serverless projects for autoscaled and fully managed Elasticsearch deployments. Sign up for a 14 day free trial.

Advanced deployment options

Self-managed. Install, configure, and run Elasticsearch on your own premises.
Elastic Cloud Enterprise. Deploy Elastic Cloud on public or private clouds, virtual machines, or your own premises.
Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes. Deploy Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes.

Learn more

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Here are some resources to help you get started:

Quickstart. A beginner’s guide to deploying your first Elasticsearch instance, indexing data, and running queries.
Webinar: Introduction to Elasticsearch. Register for our live webinars to learn directly from Elasticsearch experts.
Elastic Search Labs. Tutorials and blogs that explore AI-powered search using the latest Elasticsearch features.
- Follow our tutorial to build a hybrid search solution in Python.
- Check out the elasticsearch-labs repository for a range of Python notebooks and apps for various use cases.

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