Tutorial: Set up cross-cluster replication

To complete this tutorial, you need:

To replicate an index on a remote cluster (Cluster A) to a local cluster (Cluster B), you configure Cluster A as a remote on Cluster B.

To configure a remote cluster from Stack Management in Kibana:

PUT /_cluster/settings
{
  "persistent" : {
    "cluster" : {
      "remote" : {
        "leader" : {
          "seeds" : [
            "127.0.0.1:9300" 
          ]
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

GET /_remote/info

{
  "leader" : {
    "seeds" : [
      "127.0.0.1:9300"
    ],
    "connected" : true,
    "num_nodes_connected" : 1, 
    "max_connections_per_cluster" : 3,
    "initial_connect_timeout" : "30s",
    "skip_unavailable" : false,
    "mode" : "sniff"
  }
}

The cross-cluster replication user requires different cluster and index privileges on the remote cluster and local cluster. Use the following requests to create separate roles on the local and remote clusters, and then create a user with the required roles.

On the remote cluster that contains the leader index, the cross-cluster replication role requires the read_ccr cluster privilege, and monitor and read privileges on the leader index.

The following request creates a remote-replication role on the remote cluster:

POST /_security/role/remote-replication
{
  "cluster": [
    "read_ccr"
  ],
  "indices": [
    {
      "names": [
        "leader-index-name"
      ],
      "privileges": [
        "monitor",
        "read"
      ]
    }
  ]
}

On the local cluster that contains the follower index, the remote-replication role requires the manage_ccr cluster privilege, and monitor, read, write, and manage_follow_index privileges on the follower index.

The following request creates a remote-replication role on the local cluster:

POST /_security/role/remote-replication
{
  "cluster": [
    "manage_ccr"
  ],
  "indices": [
    {
      "names": [
        "follower-index-name"
      ],
      "privileges": [
        "monitor",
        "read",
        "write",
        "manage_follow_index"
      ]
    }
  ]
}

After creating the remote-replication role on each cluster, use the create or update users API to create a user on the local cluster cluster and assign the remote-replication role. For example, the following request assigns the remote-replication role to a user named cross-cluster-user:

POST /_security/user/cross-cluster-user
{
  "password" : "l0ng-r4nd0m-p@ssw0rd",
  "roles" : [ "remote-replication" ]
}

When you create a follower index, you reference the remote cluster and the leader index in your remote cluster.

To create a follower index from Stack Management in Kibana:

Elasticsearch initializes the follower using the remote recovery process, which transfers the existing Lucene segment files from the leader index to the follower index. The index status changes to Paused. When the remote recovery process is complete, the index following begins and the status changes to Active.

When you index documents into your leader index, Elasticsearch replicates the documents in the follower index.

PUT /server-metrics-follower/_ccr/follow?wait_for_active_shards=1
{
  "remote_cluster" : "leader",
  "leader_index" : "server-metrics"
}

You use auto-follow patterns to automatically create new followers for rolling time series indices. Whenever the name of a new index on the remote cluster matches the auto-follow pattern, a corresponding follower index is added to the local cluster. Note that only indices created on the remote cluster after the auto-follow pattern is created will be auto-followed: existing indices on the remote cluster are ignored even if they match the pattern.

An auto-follow pattern specifies the remote cluster you want to replicate from, and one or more index patterns that specify the rolling time series indices you want to replicate.

To create an auto-follow pattern from Stack Management in Kibana:

As new indices matching these patterns are created on the remote, Elasticsearch automatically replicates them to local follower indices.

PUT /_ccr/auto_follow/beats
{
  "remote_cluster" : "leader",
  "leader_index_patterns" :
  [
    "metricbeat-*", 
    "packetbeat-*" 
  ],
  "follow_index_pattern" : "{{leader_index}}-copy" 
}