Jump to content

Elasticsearch

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Logstash)

Elasticsearch
Original authorShay Banon
DeveloperElastic NV
Initial release8 February 2010; 16 years ago (2010-02-08)
Stable release
9.x9.3.0 / 28 January 2026; 53 days ago (2026-01-28)[1]
8.x8.19.11 / 11 January 2026; 2 months ago (2026-01-11)[1]
7.x7.17.29 / 24 June 2025; 8 months ago (2025-06-24)[1]
Written inJava
Operating systemCross-platform
TypeSearch and index
LicenseTriple-licensed Elastic License (proprietary; source-available), Server Side Public License (proprietary; source-available) and Affero General Public License (free and open-source)
Websitewww.elastic.co/elasticsearch/ Edit this on Wikidata
Repositorygithub.com/elastic/elasticsearch

Elasticsearch is a source-available search engine developed by Elastic. It is based on Apache Lucene and provides a distributed, multitenant-capable full-text search engine with an HTTP web interface and schema-free JSON documents. Official clients are available in Java, C#, PHP, Python, Ruby, and other languages. According to the DB-Engines ranking, Elasticsearch is the most popular enterprise search engine.[2]

Elasticsearch is distributed and uses JSON documents stored in indices divided into shards, each of which may have replicas distributed across cluster nodes. It supports full-text search, faceted search, real-time search, and multitenancy. The software is developed alongside Logstash, Kibana, and Beats as part of the Elastic Stack (formerly the ELK Stack).

History

[edit]

Shay Banon created the precursor to Elasticsearch, called Compass, in 2004.[3] Developing a third version of Compass, he concluded that a full rewrite was necessary to build a scalable, distributed search solution using JSON over HTTP as a common interface.[3] He released the first version of Elasticsearch in February 2010.[4]

Elastic NV was founded in 2012 to provide commercial services and products around Elasticsearch and related software. In June 2014, the company raised $70 million in a Series C funding round led by New Enterprise Associates, with additional funding from Benchmark Capital and Index Ventures, bringing total funding to $104 million.[5]

In March 2015, the company changed its name from Elasticsearch to Elastic and, through the acquisition of Found, launched a managed cloud offering later known as Elastic Cloud.[6] In November 2017, Elastic acquired the search startup Swiftype, whose technology became the basis for Elastic App Search and Elastic Site Search.[7] Elastic also formed partnerships with Google to offer Elastic Cloud on Google Cloud Platform and with Alibaba to offer Elasticsearch and Kibana on Alibaba Cloud.

In June 2018, Elastic filed for an initial public offering with an estimated valuation of between $1.5 and $3 billion.[8] On 5 October 2018, Elastic was listed on the New York Stock Exchange.[9]

Licensing changes

[edit]

In January 2021, Elastic announced that starting with version 7.11, Elasticsearch and Kibana would be relicensed from Apache License 2.0 to a dual license under the Server Side Public License and the Elastic License, neither of which is recognised as an open-source license.[10][11] Elastic stated the change was a response to Amazon Web Services (AWS) offering Elasticsearch and Kibana as a service without what Elastic described as adequate collaboration.[11][12] Critics of the change noted that Elastic had previously promised never to alter the Apache 2.0 licensing of Elasticsearch, Kibana, Beats, and Logstash, and predicted the move would damage the ecosystem.[11]

AWS responded by announcing a fork of the projects to continue development under Apache License 2.0.[13] Other members of the Elasticsearch ecosystem, including Logz.io, CrateDB, and Aiven, also committed to supporting a fork.[14][15][16] Due to potential trademark conflicts with the name "Elasticsearch", AWS rebranded their fork as OpenSearch in April 2021.[17]

In August 2024, Elastic added the GNU Affero General Public License as a third licensing option for Elasticsearch starting with version 8.16.0.[18][19] This made the software available under a free and open-source license once again alongside the two source-available options.

Architecture and features

[edit]

Elasticsearch is built on Apache Lucene and exposes Lucene's capabilities through a JSON and Java API. Documents are stored in indices, which are divided into primary shards; each shard may have zero or more replicas distributed across cluster nodes. Routing and rebalancing are handled automatically. Once an index has been created, the number of primary shards cannot be changed.[20]

The engine supports faceted search and percolation, a form of prospective search in which stored queries are matched against incoming documents rather than the reverse.[21] A gateway module handles long-term index persistence, allowing an index to be recovered after a node failure.[22] Real-time GET requests make Elasticsearch usable as a NoSQL datastore, though it does not support distributed transactions.[23]

In May 2019, Elastic made the core security features of the Elastic Stack available without charge, including TLS for encrypted communications, file and native realm authentication, and role-based access control for cluster APIs and indices.[24] The corresponding source code is available under the Elastic License.[25] Elasticsearch also offers SIEM[26] and machine learning capabilities[27] as part of its commercial offerings.

Official client libraries are maintained for Java,[28] C# (.NET),[29] PHP,[30] Python,[31] and Ruby,[32] among others.

Elastic Stack

[edit]

Elasticsearch is developed alongside Logstash (a data collection and log-parsing engine), Kibana (an analytics and visualisation platform), and Beats (lightweight data shippers). The four products are designed for use together as the Elastic Stack.[33] The combination was previously known as the ELK Stack, an initialism for "Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana".

See also

[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ a b c "Releases · elastic/elasticsearch". Retrieved 16 November 2025 – via GitHub.
  2. ^ "DB-Engines Ranking - popularity ranking of search engines". db-engines.com. Archived from the original on 19 October 2018. Retrieved 10 January 2016.
  3. ^ a b Banon, Shay (7 July 2010). "The Future of Compass & ElasticSearch".
  4. ^ Banon, Shay (8 February 2010). "You Know, for Search". Archived from the original on 16 January 2013.
  5. ^ Miller, Ron (5 June 2014). "ElasticSearch Scores $70M In Series C To Fund Growth Spurt". TechCrunch. Retrieved 4 April 2024.
  6. ^ Oliver, Andrew C. (10 March 2015). "Elasticsearch buys into search as a service, rebrands as 'Elastic'". InfoWorld. Retrieved 1 April 2019.
  7. ^ Ha, Anthony (9 November 2017). "Elastic acquires search startup Swiftype". TechCrunch. Retrieved 3 April 2024.
  8. ^ Schleifer, Theodore (21 June 2018). "The IPOs keep coming: The search company Elastic has filed to go public". Recode. Archived from the original on 5 October 2018. Retrieved 22 June 2018.
  9. ^ Banon, Shay (5 October 2018). "Ze Bell Has Rung: Thank You Users, Customers, and Partners". Elastic NV. Retrieved 24 October 2018.
  10. ^ Banon, Shay (14 January 2021). "Doubling down on open, Part II". Elastic. Retrieved 19 January 2021.
  11. ^ a b c Vaughan-Nichols, Steven J. "Elastic changes open-source license to monetize cloud-service use". ZDNet. Retrieved 23 January 2021.
  12. ^ Banon, Shay (19 January 2021). "Amazon: NOT OK - why we had to change Elastic licensing". Elastic. Retrieved 19 January 2021.
  13. ^ "Stepping up for a truly open source Elasticsearch". Amazon Web Services. 21 January 2021. Retrieved 28 January 2021.
  14. ^ Vaughan-Nichols, Steven J. "AWS, as predicted, is forking Elasticsearch". ZDNet. Retrieved 28 January 2021.
  15. ^ "CrateDB Doubling Down on Permissive Licensing and the Elasticsearch Lockdown". CrateDB. 27 January 2021. Retrieved 28 January 2021.
  16. ^ "Momentum Builds to Break Elasticsearch Licensing Deadlock". Datanami. 25 January 2021. Retrieved 31 January 2021.
  17. ^ Anderson, Tim (13 April 2021). "You know what? Fork this: AWS renames its take on Elasticsearch to OpenSearch following trademark fight". The Register. Retrieved 13 April 2021.
  18. ^ Banon, Shay (29 August 2024). "Elasticsearch is Open Source, Again".
  19. ^ "Add AGPLv3 as a supported license · elastic/elasticsearch@0279c0a". GitHub. Retrieved 13 April 2025.
  20. ^ "How to monitor Elasticsearch performance". Datadog. 26 September 2016. Retrieved 26 September 2016.
  21. ^ "Percolate API". Elasticsearch.org. Archived from the original on 2 October 2013. Retrieved 4 February 2014.
  22. ^ "elasticsearch Guide: Gateway". Elasticsearch.org. Retrieved 19 April 2013.
  23. ^ "No transaction support". Elasticsearch-users.115913.n3.nabble.com. 8 July 2010. Archived from the original on 23 March 2020. Retrieved 4 February 2014.
  24. ^ "Security for Elasticsearch is now free". Elastic Blog. 20 May 2019. Retrieved 17 June 2019.
  25. ^ "Doubling Down on Open". Elastic Blog. 27 February 2018. Retrieved 24 October 2019.
  26. ^ "Introducing Elastic SIEM". Elastic Blog. 25 June 2019. Retrieved 2 March 2020.
  27. ^ "Introducing Machine Learning for the Elastic Stack". Elastic Blog. 4 May 2017. Retrieved 2 March 2020.
  28. ^ "Elasticsearch Java Client". GitHub. Retrieved 7 October 2022.
  29. ^ "Elasticsearch .NET Client". GitHub. Retrieved 7 October 2022.
  30. ^ "Elasticsearch PHP Client". GitHub. Retrieved 7 October 2022.
  31. ^ "Elasticsearch Python Client". GitHub. Retrieved 7 October 2022.
  32. ^ "Elasticsearch Ruby Client". GitHub. Retrieved 7 October 2022.
  33. ^ Miller, Ron (26 October 2016). "Elastic brings order to its product line with Elastic Stack". TechCrunch. Retrieved 3 April 2024.
[edit]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Elasticsearch&oldid=1343932458"