DC 6.1 Elastic Search Cloud
- Leon Thorsell Simonsen
To provide good and proper search capabilities Digizuite uses Elasticsearch. Elasticsearch can be run either on-premises by following a relevant guide here: https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/install-elasticsearch.html , or using Elastic Cloud https://www.elastic.co/cloud/ .
The recommended approach is to use Elastic Cloud. You should only use the on-premises version if you for some reason cannot access Elastic cloud due to e.g., network settings. If you do insist on installing Elasticsearch on Premises, please make sure to read and follow all the information Elastic provided, to make sure you get both a reliable and secure cluster. Digizuite does not provide any guidelines in how to achieve this. If you are not sure how to run a proper Elasticsearch cluster, choose Elastic cloud, and save yourself the pain.
The guide describes how to create an Elasticsearch cluster using Elasticsearch cloud, and get the required information to be able to bootstrap your Digizuite.
1. Signing up
First and foremost you have to create an Elastic cloud account. Go to https://www.elastic.co/cloud/ and select “Login” or “Try free”.
After you have signed up it is possible to attach a credit card to keep using Elastic for more than 14 days. If you are an employee at Digizuite that is currently configuring an environment, please see this guide.
Once your account has been created you should be met with a dashboard that looks roughly like this:
2. Creating a new cluster
To actually create a cluster, select the Start your free trial button or create new cluster depending on if you have a credit card attached or not.
This guide uses screenshots from the free trial, so the actual steps might be slightly different for a full account.
Once you press the Start your free trial button, you will be met with this screen:
Here you can enter a name for the deployment. Usually, this would be something like “Customer name - Dev/Prod” depending on their specifics. You can also edit the more detailed settings of the cluster from here.
Please open the settings now. The default settings will look roughly like this:
General guidelines for each setting is as follows:
Setting name | Description | Recommended value |
|---|---|---|
Cloud provided | At which cloud provider is this cluster hosted. At the time of writing this, 3 providers are available. Azure, AWS (Amazon Web Services) and GCP (Google Cloud Platform. The cloud provider affects things like price and available regions for hosting. Try to pick the same cloud provider as where the Digizuite is hosted, as this gives the shortest latency for executing searches. | Azure |
Region | Where in the world is the cluster hosted? Try to use the same region as where the Digizuite is hosted for best performance. If not possible, try to pick the closest possible region. | Same region as Digizuite is hosted in. |
Hardware Profile | Decides the CPU/Memory/Storage configuration. As Digizuite only uses Elasticsearch for searching, you will want to pick “Compute Optimized” | Compute Optimized |
Version | What version of Elasticsearch should the cluster be running. At the time of writing digizuite has been tested with Elasticsearch version 8.0. But any version above that should work | 8.x. At least 8.0, but higher versions should also work. |
Once you have made all the settings, the settings should look roughly like this:
Press the Create deployment button.
Elastic cloud will load for a while, and then it will show a set of root credentials. Make sure to download these and keep them safe, since they are needed to recover the cluster if all other access has been lost.
The deployment itself will take a couple of minutes to finish. Go grab a cup of coffee or a glass of water meanwhile.
Once the deployment is ready, click the Continue button.
This will take you to your brand-new cluster.
3. Getting credentials for accessing the Elasticsearch cluster
Once you hit the continue button you will likely be met with a screen like this:
If you are interested in learning more about Elastic you can select Add data, however as the Digizuite will put the data required into Elastic, you should just select Explore on my own.
Once you get past that screen, you are met with the Kibana front page. From here select the menu burger icon in the top-left and select Stack Management.
From the Stack Management page scroll down and select API keys under Security. From that page, select Create API key.
A small wizard should open to the right. Here you should enter a sensible name for this API key. It is recommended again to go with something like “Customer name - Test/Prod”. Make sure the 3 options are all turned off. Press Create API key.
This will now should you the created API key. Make sure to copy and save it somewhere, as you will not be able to see it in this UI again. You will need the key later when configuring the Digizuite. Do note that the api key is actually longer than what is shown in the UI, so make sure to use the copy button to the right of the key to actually copy the entire key.
4. Getting the Elasticsearch server URL
To get the actual URL for Elasticsearch, open the menu again, and go to Manage this deployment.
This will take you back to the Elastic cloud UI. From here you can view all sorts of general details about your cluster, such as how many resources it is using. From here you can select Copy endpoint to copy the URL for Elasticsearch. Make sure to save this somewhere, as you will need it when installing the Digizuite.
From here you can also go back into Kibana by selecting Open Kibana.
5. Done diddly done
You should now have the two things you need to set up the Digizuite for Elasticsearch.
An API key
An Elasticsearch URL