Install Elasticsearch with Docker

Elasticsearch can be quickly started for development or testing use with the following command:

docker run -p 9200:9200 -e "http.host=0.0.0.0" -e "transport.host=127.0.0.1" docker.elastic.co/elasticsearch/elasticsearch:5.3.3

The following example brings up a cluster comprising two Elasticsearch nodes. To bring up the cluster, use the docker-compose.yml and just type:

docker-compose up

The node elasticsearch1 listens on localhost:9200 while elasticsearch2 talks to elasticsearch1 over a Docker network.

This example also uses Docker named volumes, called esdata1 and esdata2 which will be created if not already present.

docker-compose.yml:

version: '2'
services:
  elasticsearch1:
    image: docker.elastic.co/elasticsearch/elasticsearch:5.3.3
    container_name: elasticsearch1
    environment:
      - cluster.name=docker-cluster
      - bootstrap.memory_lock=true
      - "ES_JAVA_OPTS=-Xms512m -Xmx512m"
    ulimits:
      memlock:
        soft: -1
        hard: -1
      nofile:
        soft: 65536
        hard: 65536
    mem_limit: 1g
    cap_add:
      - IPC_LOCK
    volumes:
      - esdata1:/usr/share/elasticsearch/data
    ports:
      - 9200:9200
    networks:
      - esnet
  elasticsearch2:
    image: docker.elastic.co/elasticsearch/elasticsearch:5.3.3
    environment:
      - cluster.name=docker-cluster
      - bootstrap.memory_lock=true
      - "ES_JAVA_OPTS=-Xms512m -Xmx512m"
      - "discovery.zen.ping.unicast.hosts=elasticsearch1"
    ulimits:
      memlock:
        soft: -1
        hard: -1
      nofile:
        soft: 65536
        hard: 65536
    mem_limit: 1g
    cap_add:
      - IPC_LOCK
    volumes:
      - esdata2:/usr/share/elasticsearch/data
    networks:
      - esnet

volumes:
  esdata1:
    driver: local
  esdata2:
    driver: local

networks:
  esnet:
    driver: bridge

To stop the cluster, type docker-compose down. Data volumes will persist, so it’s possible to start the cluster again with the same data using docker-compose up. To destroy the cluster and the data volumes just type docker-compose down -v.

curl -u elastic http://127.0.0.1:9200/_cat/health
Enter host password for user 'elastic':
1472225929 15:38:49 docker-cluster green 2 2 4 2 0 0 0 0 - 100.0%

Log messages go to the console and are handled by the configured Docker logging driver. By default you can access logs with docker logs.

For example, to define the cluster name with docker run you can pass -e "cluster.name=mynewclustername". Double quotes are required.

Create your custom config file and mount this over the image’s corresponding file. For example, bind-mounting a custom_elasticsearch.yml with docker run can be accomplished with the parameter:

-v full_path_to/custom_elasticsearch.yml:/usr/share/elasticsearch/config/elasticsearch.yml

In some environments, it may make more sense to prepare a custom image containing your configuration. A Dockerfile to achieve this may be as simple as:

FROM docker.elastic.co/elasticsearch/elasticsearch:5.3.3
ADD elasticsearch.yml /usr/share/elasticsearch/config/
USER root
RUN chown elasticsearch:elasticsearch config/elasticsearch.yml
USER elasticsearch

You could then build and try the image with something like:

docker build --tag=elasticsearch-custom .
docker run -ti -v /usr/share/elasticsearch/data elasticsearch-custom

Options can be passed as command-line options to the Elasticsearch process by overriding the default command for the image. For example:

docker run <various parameters> bin/elasticsearch -Ecluster.name=mynewclustername