How to Install Elasticsearch (Single Node Cluster) on Ubuntu & CentOS

Elasticsearch is flexible and powerful open source, distributed real-time search and analytic engine. Using a simple set of APIs, it provides the ability for full-text search. Elastic search is freely available under the Apache 2 license, which provides most flexibility.

This tutorial will help you to setup Elasticsearch single node cluster on CentOS, Red Hat, Ubuntu, Debian and LinuxMint systems.

1. Verify Java

Java is the primary requirement for installing Elasticsearch. So make sure you have Java installed on your system.

# java -version 

java version "1.8.0_31"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_31-b13)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.31-b07, mixed mode)

If you don’t have Java installed on your system, use one of following link to install it first.

• Install Java 8 on CentOS/RHEL 7/6/5
• Install Java 8 on Ubuntu

2. Download Elasticsearch Archive

Now download the latest Elasticsearch archive from its official download page. At the time of last update of this article Elasticsearch 5.1.1 version is latest version available to download.

$ /tmp
$ wget https://artifacts.elastic.co/downloads/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-5.1.1.zip

Now extract downloaded Elasticsearch archive on your system.

$ tar xzf elasticsearch-5.1.1.tar.gz

3. Configure Elasticsearch

Now we need to setup Elasticsearch cluster and node name. Elasticsearch uses “elasticsearch” as default cluster name, We recommend to change it as per your setup.

$ mv elasticsearch-5.1.1 /usr/share/elasticsearch
$ cd /usr/share/elasticsearch

To change cluster named edit config/elasticsearch.yml file and update following values. Node names are dynamically generated, but to keep a fixed user-friendly name change it also. You may also need to change network host to access elasticsearch from remote hosts.

$ vim config/elasticsearch.yml

  network.host: 192.168.10.100
  cluster.name: TecAdmin_Cluster1
  node.name: "California DataCenter"

4. Install Elasticsearch-Head Plugin

elasticsearch-head is a web front end for browsing and interacting with an Elastic Search cluster. Use the following command to install it.

$ bin/plugin install mobz/elasticsearch-head

5. Starting Elasticsearch Cluster

As the Elasticsearch setup is completed. Let the start Elasticsearch cluster using following command.

$ ./bin/elasticsearch &

6. Verify Setup

You have all done, just need to verify setup. Elasticsearch works on port default port 9200, open your browser to point your server on port 9200, You will find some thing like below output

 
  http://localhost:9200/_plugin/head/ 

 
  http://svt1.tecadmin.net:9200/

7. Basic Examples of Elasticsearch Uses

Following examples will help you to add, fetch and search data in Elasticsearch cluster.

Creating Bucket

 curl -XPUT http://localhost:9200/mybucket

Output:

{"acknowledged":true}

Adding Data to Elasticsearch

Use following commands to add some data in Elasticsearch.
Command 1:

curl -XPUT 'http://localhost:9200/mybucket/user/johny' -d '{ "name" : "Rahul Kumar" }'

Output:

{"_index":"mybucket","_type":"user","_id":"johny","_version":1,"created":true}

Command 2:

curl -XPUT 'http://localhost:9200/mybucket/post/1' -d '
{
    "user": "Rahul",
    "postDate": "01-15-2015",
    "body": "This is Demo Post 1 in Elasticsearch" ,
    "title": "Demo Post 1"
}'

Output:

{"_index":"mybucket","_type":"post","_id":"1","_version":1,"created":true}

Command 3:

curl -XPUT 'http://localhost:9200/mybucket/post/2' -d '
{
    "user": "TecAdmin",
    "postDate": "01-15-2015",
    "body": "This is Demo Post 2 in Elasticsearch" ,
    "title": "Demo Post 2"
}'

Output:

{"_index":"mybucket","_type":"post","_id":"2","_version":1,"created":true}

Fetching Data from Elasticsearch

Use following command to GET data from ElasticSearch and read the output.

curl -XGET 'http://localhost:9200/mybucket/user/johny?pretty=true'
curl -XGET 'http://localhost:9200/mybucket/post/1?pretty=true'
curl -XGET 'http://localhost:9200/mybucket/post/2?pretty=true'

Searching in Elasticsearch

Use following command to search data from elastic search. Below command will search all data associated with user johny.

curl 'http://localhost:9200/mybucket/post/_search?q=user:TecAdmin&pretty=true'

Output:

{
  "took" : 145,
  "timed_out" : false,
  "_shards" : {
    "total" : 5,
    "successful" : 5,
    "failed" : 0
  },
  "hits" : {
    "total" : 1,
    "max_score" : 0.30685282,
    "hits" : [ {
      "_index" : "mybucket",
      "_type" : "post",
      "_id" : "2",
      "_score" : 0.30685282,
      "_source":
{
    "user": "TecAdmin",
    "postDate": "01-15-2015",
    "body": "This is Demo Post 2 in Elasticsearch" ,
    "title": "Demo Post 2"
}
    } ]
  }
}

Congratulation’s! You have successfully configured elasticsearch single node cluster on your Linux system.