Search and analytics#

General information#

Elasticsearch automated service in NGN Cloud allows you to quickly deploy and configure search, analysis, and monitoring of all data types.

Elasticsearch is a distributed search and analytics system that provides a unified data storage for Elastic Stack based solutions: Elasticsearch, Elastic Agent, Beats, Logstash and Kibana. To learn more about Elasticsearch, visit the official website.

Along with Elasticsearch, NGN Cloud supports Kibana service for convenient data management and visualization and will soon feature integration with Logstash, a tool that makes it easy to collect, aggregate, enrich, and store data in Elasticsearch.

Before you begin#

To get started with the search and analytics service, follow these steps:

  1. Create a project, if you don’t have one.

  2. In the IAM section, create a user with the PaaS Administrator or Cloud Administrator role and add it to the project with the PaaS privilege.

  3. Make sure that the project has all the required resources – subnets, SSH keys, and security groups. Otherwise, create them.

  4. Read the recommendations on how to work with the service in the cloud.

Starting the Elasticsearch service#

To start the service, go to the Services Store or Running Services section, select the Elasticsearch service in the Search and analytics tab and click Create.

The service launch procedure comprises the following stages:

  1. Set the required network parameters for an Elasticsearch service:

    • VPC where the service will be deployed.

    • Security groups to filter traffic on the instance interface on which the Elasticsearch service will run.

    • Subnets where the service will be deployed, or network interfaces through which cluster nodes will connect to subnets.

  2. Set the configuration of one or more instances on which the data search and analysis service will run.

    Select the instance type and parameters of its volumes: type, size and IOPS (if available for a type).

    Note

    The Elasticsearch service performance depends on the node components. We recommend using the Memory Optimized instance type.

    In addition, you can specify an SSH key. In this case, after automatic service configuration, you will have SSH access to the respective instances.

    Attention

    We provide the option to connect to instances using an SSH key while the new Elasticsearch service is beta testing. This feature may be disabled in the future.

  3. Set additional service parameters:

    • Service name – any unique name for the caching service.

    • Version.

    • Option to install Kibana, a visualization and reporting tool.

    • Monitoring agent installation option. For centralized PaaS service monitoring, first deploy the Prometheus-based monitoring service. Upon selecting this option, also select the monitoring service you want to use. Optionally, you can set monitoring labels, which the installed monitoring agents will assign to collected metrics (for details, see labels).

    • Logging agent installation option – For centralized PaaS service logging, first create a logging service. Once a PaaS service is created, you will be able to install logging agents manually only.

      • Logging service – The selection of a logging service is only available when the Enable logging checkbox is checked.

      • Logging tags – Tags are assigned to logs when the latter are imported by the logging service. They simplify search for the required logs. Tags can only be set when the Enable logging checkbox is checked.

    • Elasticsearch user password. You can set it manually or generate automatically. If a password is set, authentication is required to log in to Kibana.

  4. Click Create.

    Note

    The service launching process usually takes 5 to 15 minutes.

Deleting an Elasticsearch service#

Deleting the Elasticsearch service deletes all instances and volumes created with it.

You can delete the service using one of the following methods.

  1. Go to the Installed Services section.

  2. Open the Search and analytics tab.

  3. Find the service in the table and click on the icon .

  1. Go to the Installed Services section.

  2. Open the Search and analytics tab.

  3. Find the service in the table and go to the service page.

  4. Click :Delete in the Information tab.