Helm

Helm is a package manager that allows you to easily install and manage Elasticsearch in a Kubernetes cluster. You can define your Elasticsearch configurations in a YAML file and use Helm to deploy your applications in a version-controlled and reproducible way.

The Helm chart contains the resources described in the following table.

The specification in the default Helm chart supports many standard use cases and setups. You can modify the default chart to configure your desired specifications and set Transport Layer Security (TLS) and role-based access control (RBAC).

For information about the default configuration, steps to configure security, and configurable parameters, see the README.

The instructions here assume you have a Kubernetes cluster with Helm preinstalled. See the Kubernetes documentation for steps to configure a Kubernetes cluster and the Helm documentation to install Helm.

Install using Helm

1. Clone the opendistro-build repository:

   git clone https://github.com/opendistro-for-elasticsearch/opendistro-build
   

   You can use the release tag (e.g. v1.7.0 or v1.8.0) to get the specific Open Distro for Elasticsearch version.

2. Change to the opendistro-es directory:

   cd opendistro-build/helm/opendistro-es/
   

3. Package the Helm chart:

   helm package .
   

4. Deploy Elasticsearch:

   helm install --generate-name opendistro-es-1.11.0.tgz
   

The output shows you the specifications instantiated from the install. To customize the deployment, pass in the values that you want to override with a custom YAML file:

helm install --values=customevalues.yaml opendistro-es-1.11.0.tgz

Sample output

NAME: opendistro-es
LAST DEPLOYED: Fri Jan 17 14:44:19 2020
NAMESPACE: default
STATUS: deployed
REVISION: 1
TEST SUITE: None

To make sure your Elasticsearch pod is up and running, run the following command:

$ kubectl get pods
NAME                                    READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
opendistro-es-client-988fb9fbf-ph8f     1/1     Running   0          3m30s
opendistro-es-data-0                    1/1     Running   0          3m30s
opendistro-es-kibana-786f547486-75gw4   1/1     Running   0          3m31s
opendistro-es-master-0                  1/1     Running   0          3m30s

To access the Elasticsearch shell:

$ kubectl exec -it opendistro-es-master-1 -- /bin/bash

You can send requests to the pod to verify that Elasticsearch is up and running:

$ curl -XGET https://localhost:9200 -u admin:admin --insecure

To set up port forwarding to access Kibana, exit the Elasticsearch shell and run the following command:

$ kubectl port-forward deployment/opendistro-es-kibana 5601

You can now access Kibana from your browser at: http://localhost:5601.

Uninstall using Helm

To delete or uninstall this deployment, run the following command:

helm delete opendistro-es