This is a highly configurable ElasticSearch Docker image built using Docker's automated build process published to the public Docker Hub Registry.
It is usually the back-end for a Logstash instance with Kibana as the frontend forming what is commonly referred to as an ELK stack.
To start a basic container using ephemeral storage, exposing port 9200 for client connectivity:
docker run --name elasticsearch \
--publish 9200:9200 \
monsantoco/elasticsearch
Within the container the volume /var/lib/elasticsearch
is exposed. It contains the sub-directories for data
, log
and config
. To start a default container with attached persistent/shared storage for data:
mkdir -p /es/data
docker run --name elasticsearch
--publish 9200:9200 \
--volume /data:/var/lib/elasticsearch/data \
monsantoco/elasticsearch
Attaching persistent storage ensures that the data is retained across container restarts (with some obvious caveats). It is recommended this be done instead via a data container, preferably hosted an AWS S3 bucket or other externalized, distributed persistent storage.
A few plugins are installed:
-
BigDesk: Provides live charts and statistics for an Elasticsearch cluster. You can open a browser and navigate to
http://localhost:9200/_plugin/bigdesk/
it will open Bigdesk and auto-connect to the ES node. You will need to change thelocalhost
and9200
port to the correct values for your environment/setup. -
ElasticHQ: Monitoring, management, and querying web interface for ElasticSearch instances and clusters.
-
Whatson: an ElasticSearch plugin to visualize the state of a cluster.
-
Kopf: A simple web administration tool for Elasticsearch.
-
AWS Cloud - Allows usage of AWS API for unicast discovery and S3 repositories for snapshots.
Any commands passed on the command line are accepted as input to the elasticsearch command. For example, to set the JVM heap size to 10GB:
docker run --name elasticsearch \
--publish 9200:9200 \
monsantoco/elasticsearch -Xmx10g -Xms10g
Environment variables are accepted as a means to provide further configuration by reading those starting with ES_
. Any matching variables will get added to ElasticSearch's configuration file, `elasticsearch.yml' by:
- Removing the
ES_
prefix - Transforming to lower case
- Replacing occurrences of
_
with.
, except where there is a double (__
) which is replaced by a single (_
).
For example, an environment variable ES_CLUSTER_NAME=lscluster
will result in cluster.name=lscluster
within elasticsearch.yml
. Similarly, ES_CLOUD_AWS_ACCESS__KEY=GHKDFIADFNADFIADFKJG
would result in cloud.aws.access_key=GHKDFIADFNADFIADFKJG
within elasticsearch.yml
.
You can also import your own configuration file by setting ES_CFG_URL
to a valid URL. The environment variable substitution can then also be used for the appropriate variables within your file as well.
As an example:
docker run --name elasticsearch \
--publish 9200:9200 \
--env ES_CFG_URL=http://[some url] \
--env ES_CLUSTER_NAME=es_test_01 \
monsantoco/elasticsearch
- 9200/tcp: For client connectivity.
- 9300/tcp: For clustering using ransport/node protocols.