Install Elasticsearch Docker
- Install Plugin Elasticsearch Docker
- Install Elasticsearch Kibana Logstash Docker
- Install Elasticsearch Docker Mac
- Install Elasticsearch Docker For Windows

- Docker Official Images. Elasticsearch is a powerful open source search and analytics engine that makes data easy to explore. Container Linux ARM 64 x86-64 Application Services Official Image. Copy and paste to pull this image.
- To Install Elasticsearch with Docker, first, you need to install docker on your server with command Docker images for Elasticsearch are available from https.
Elasticsearch is also available as Docker images.The images use centos:8 as the base image.
The Elasticsearch web server (listening on port 443) proxies the request to the Elasticsearch server (by default, it listens on port 9200). Access to Elasticsearch is further protected by HTTP Basic authentication. For any request to reach Elasticsearch, it must travel over SSL and provide a valid username and password.
A list of all published Docker images and tags is available atwww.docker.elastic.co. The source filesare inGithub.
This package contains both free and subscription features.Start a 30-day trial to try out all of the features.
Obtaining Elasticsearch for Docker is as simple as issuing a docker pull
commandagainst the Elastic Docker registry.
Version 7.16.0 of Elasticsearch has not yet been released, so noDocker image is currently available for this version.
Version 7.16.0 of the Elasticsearch Docker image has not yet been released.
Starting a multi-node cluster with Docker Composeedit
To get a three-node Elasticsearch cluster up and running in Docker,you can use Docker Compose:
Create a
docker-compose.yml
file:Version 7.16.0 of Elasticsearch has not yet been released, so a
docker-compose.yml
is not available for this version.This sample
docker-compose.yml
file uses theES_JAVA_OPTS
environment variable to manually set the heap size to 512MB. We do not recommendusingES_JAVA_OPTS
in production. See Manually set the heap size.This sample Docker Compose file brings up a three-node Elasticsearch cluster.Node
es01
listens onlocalhost:9200
andes02
andes03
talk toes01
over a Docker network.Please note that this configuration exposes port 9200 on all network interfaces, and given howDocker manipulates
iptables
on Linux, this means that your Elasticsearch cluster is publically accessible,potentially ignoring any firewall settings. If you don’t want to expose port 9200 and instead usea reverse proxy, replace9200:9200
with127.0.0.1:9200:9200
in the docker-compose.yml file.Elasticsearch will then only be accessible from the host machine itself.The Docker named volumes
data01
,data02
, anddata03
store the node data directories so the data persists across restarts.If they don’t already exist,docker-compose
creates them when you bring up the cluster.Make sure Docker Engine is allotted at least 4GiB of memory.In Docker Desktop, you configure resource usage on the Advanced tab in Preference (macOS)or Settings (Windows).
Docker Compose is not pre-installed with Docker on Linux.See docs.docker.com for installation instructions:Install Compose on Linux
Run
docker-compose
to bring up the cluster:Submit a
_cat/nodes
request to see that the nodes are up and running:
Log messages go to the console and are handled by the configured Docker logging driver.By default you can access logs with docker logs
. If you would prefer the Elasticsearchcontainer to write logs to disk, set the ES_LOG_STYLE
environment variable to file
.This causes Elasticsearch to use the same logging configuration as other Elasticsearch distribution formats.
To stop the cluster, run docker-compose down
.The data in the Docker volumes is preserved and loadedwhen you restart the cluster with docker-compose up
.To delete the data volumes when you bring down the cluster,specify the -v
option: docker-compose down -v
.
See Encrypting communications in an Elasticsearch Docker Container andRun the Elastic Stack in Docker with TLS enabled.
The following requirements and recommendations apply when running Elasticsearch in Docker in production.
The vm.max_map_count
kernel setting must be set to at least 262144
for production use.
How you set vm.max_map_count
depends on your platform:
Linux
The
vm.max_map_count
setting should be set permanently in/etc/sysctl.conf
:To apply the setting on a live system, run:
macOS with Docker for Mac
The
vm.max_map_count
setting must be set within the xhyve virtual machine:From the command line, run:
Press enter and use`sysctl` to configure
vm.max_map_count
:- To exit the
screen
session, typeCtrl a d
.
Windows and macOS with Docker Desktop
The
vm.max_map_count
setting must be set via docker-machine:Windows with Docker Desktop WSL 2 backend
The
vm.max_map_count
setting must be set in the docker-desktop container:
Configuration files must be readable by the elasticsearch
useredit
By default, Elasticsearch runs inside the container as user elasticsearch
usinguid:gid 1000:0
.
One exception is Openshift,which runs containers using an arbitrarily assigned user ID.Openshift presents persistent volumes with the gid set to 0
, which works without any adjustments.
If you are bind-mounting a local directory or file, it must be readable by the elasticsearch
user.In addition, this user must have write access to the config, data and log dirs(Elasticsearch needs write access to the config
directory so that it can generate a keystore).A good strategy is to grant group access to gid 0
for the local directory.
For example, to prepare a local directory for storing data through a bind-mount:
You can also run an Elasticsearch container using both a custom UID and GID. Unless youbind-mount each of the config
, data` and logs
directories, you must passthe command line option --group-add 0
to docker run
. This ensures that the userunder which Elasticsearch is running is also a member of the root
(GID 0) group inside thecontainer.
As a last resort, you can force the container to mutate the ownership ofany bind-mounts used for the data and log dirs through theenvironment variable TAKE_FILE_OWNERSHIP
. When you do this, they will be owned byuid:gid 1000:0
, which provides the required read/write access to the Elasticsearch process.
Increased ulimits for nofile and nprocmust be available for the Elasticsearch containers.Verify the init systemfor the Docker daemon sets them to acceptable values.
To check the Docker daemon defaults for ulimits, run:
If needed, adjust them in the Daemon or override them per container.For example, when using docker run
, set:
Swapping needs to be disabled for performance and node stability.For information about ways to do this, see Disable swapping.
If you opt for the bootstrap.memory_lock: true
approach,you also need to define the memlock: true
ulimit in theDocker Daemon,or explicitly set for the container as shown in the sample compose file.When using docker run
, you can specify:
The image exposesTCP ports 9200 and 9300. For production clusters, randomizing thepublished ports with --publish-all
is recommended,unless you are pinning one container per host.
By default, Elasticsearch automatically sizes JVM heap based on a nodes’sroles and the total memory available to the node’s container. Werecommend this default sizing for most production environments. If needed, youcan override default sizing by manually setting JVM heap size.
To manually set the heap size in production, bind mount a JVMoptions file under /usr/share/elasticsearch/config/jvm.options.d
thatincludes your desired heap size settings.
For testing, you can also manually set the heap size using the ES_JAVA_OPTS
environment variable. For example, to use 16GB, specify -eES_JAVA_OPTS='-Xms16g -Xmx16g'
with docker run
. The ES_JAVA_OPTS
variableoverrides all other JVM options. The ES_JAVA_OPTS
variable overrides all otherJVM options. We do not recommend using ES_JAVA_OPTS
in production. Thedocker-compose.yml
file above sets the heap size to 512MB.
Pin your deployments to a specific version of the Elasticsearch Docker image. Forexample docker.elastic.co/elasticsearch/elasticsearch:7.16.0
.
You should use a volume bound on /usr/share/elasticsearch/data
for the following reasons:
- The data of your Elasticsearch node won’t be lost if the container is killed
- Elasticsearch is I/O sensitive and the Docker storage driver is not ideal for fast I/O
- It allows the use of advancedDocker volume plugins
If you are using the devicemapper storage driver, do not use the default loop-lvm
mode.Configure docker-engine to usedirect-lvm.
Consider centralizing your logs by using a differentlogging driver. Alsonote that the default json-file logging driver is not ideally suited forproduction use.
When you run in Docker, the Elasticsearch configuration files are loaded from/usr/share/elasticsearch/config/
.
To use custom configuration files, you bind-mount the filesover the configuration files in the image.
You can set individual Elasticsearch configuration parameters using Docker environment variables.The sample compose file and thesingle-node example use this method. You canuse the setting name directly as the environment variable name. Ifyou cannot do this, for example because your orchestration platform forbidsperiods in environment variable names, then you can use an alternativestyle by converting the setting name as follows.
- Change the setting name to uppercase
- Prefix it with
ES_SETTING_
- Escape any underscores (
_
) by duplicating them - Convert all periods (
.
) to underscores (_
)
For example, -e bootstrap.memory_lock=true
becomes-e ES_SETTING_BOOTSTRAP_MEMORY__LOCK=true
.
You can use the contents of a file to set the value of theELASTIC_PASSWORD
or KEYSTORE_PASSWORD
environment variables, bysuffixing the environment variable name with _FILE
. This is useful forpassing secrets such as passwords to Elasticsearch without specifying them directly.
For example, to set the Elasticsearch bootstrap password from a file, you can bind mount thefile and set the ELASTIC_PASSWORD_FILE
environment variable to the mount location.If you mount the password file to /run/secrets/bootstrapPassword.txt
, specify:
You can override the default command for the image to pass Elasticsearch configurationparameters as command line options. For example:
While bind-mounting your configuration files is usually the preferred method in production,you can also create a custom Docker imagethat contains your configuration.
Create custom config files and bind-mount them over the corresponding files in the Docker image.For example, to bind-mount custom_elasticsearch.yml
with docker run
, specify:
The container runs Elasticsearch as user elasticsearch
usinguid:gid 1000:0
. Bind mounted host directories and files must be accessible by this user,and the data and log directories must be writable by this user.
By default, Elasticsearch will auto-generate a keystore file for securesettings. This file is obfuscated but not encrypted.
To encrypt your secure settings with a password and have them persist outsidethe container, use a docker run
command to manually create the keystoreinstead. The command must:
- Bind-mount the
config
directory. The command will create anelasticsearch.keystore
file in this directory. To avoid errors, donot directly bind-mount theelasticsearch.keystore
file. - Use the
elasticsearch-keystore
tool with thecreate -p
option. You’ll beprompted to enter a password for the keystore.
If you’ve already created the keystore and don’t need to update it, you canbind-mount the elasticsearch.keystore
file directly. You can use theKEYSTORE_PASSWORD
environment variable to provide the keystore password to thecontainer at startup. For example, a docker run
command might have thefollowing options:
In some environments, it might make more sense to prepare a custom image that containsyour configuration. A Dockerfile
to achieve this might be as simple as:
You could then build and run the image with:
Some plugins require additional security permissions.You must explicitly accept them either by:
- Attaching a
tty
when you run the Docker image and allowing the permissions when prompted. - Inspecting the security permissions and accepting them (if appropriate) by adding the
--batch
flag to the plugin install command.
See Plugin managementfor more information.
Here’s how to resolve common errors when running Elasticsearch with Docker.
A keystore-relateddocker run
command attemptedto directly bind-mount an elasticsearch.keystore
file that doesn’t exist. Ifyou use the -v
or --volume
flag to mount a file that doesn’t exist, Dockerinstead creates a directory with the same name.
To resolve this error:
- Delete the
elasticsearch.keystore
directory in theconfig
directory. - Update the
-v
or--volume
flag to point to theconfig
directory pathrather than the keystore file’s path. For an example, seeCreate an encrypted Elasticsearch keystore. - Retry the command.
elasticsearch.keystore: Device or resource busyedit
A docker run
command attempted to update thekeystore while directly bind-mounting the elasticsearch.keystore
file. Toupdate the keystore, the container requires access to other files in theconfig
directory, such as keystore.tmp
.
To resolve this error:
- Update the
-v
or--volume
flag to point to theconfig
directorypath rather than the keystore file’s path. For an example, seeCreate an encrypted Elasticsearch keystore. - Retry the command.
You now have a test Elasticsearch environment set up. Before you startserious development or go into production with Elasticsearch, you must do some additionalsetup:

- Learn how to configure Elasticsearch.
- Configure important Elasticsearch settings.
- Configure important system settings.
Most Popular
Docker images for Kibana are available from the Elastic Docker registry. Thebase image is centos:7.
A list of all published Docker images and tags is available atwww.docker.elastic.co. The source code is inGitHub.
These images contain both free and subscription features.Start a 30-day trial to try out all of the features.
Run Kibana on Docker for developmentedit
To start an Elasticsearch container for development or testing, run:
To start Kibana and connect it to your Elasticsearch container, run the following commandsin a new terminal session:
To access Kibana, go to http://localhost:5601.
Stop Docker containersedit
To stop your containers, run:
To remove the containers and their network, run:
Configure Kibana on Dockeredit
The Docker images provide several methods for configuring Kibana. Theconventional approach is to provide a kibana.yml
file as described inConfiguring Kibana, but it’s also possible to useenvironment variables to define settings.
Bind-mounted configurationedit
One way to configure Kibana on Docker is to provide kibana.yml
via bind-mounting.With docker-compose
, the bind-mount can be specified like this:
Install Plugin Elasticsearch Docker
By default, {kib] auto-generates a keystore file for secure settings at startup. To persist your secure settings, use the kibana-keystore
utility to bind-mount the parent directory of the keystore to the container. For example:
Environment variable configurationedit
Under Docker, Kibana can be configured via environment variables. Whenthe container starts, a helper process checks the environment for variables thatcan be mapped to Kibana command-line arguments.
For compatibility with container orchestration systems, theseenvironment variables are written in all capitals, with underscores asword separators. The helper translates these names to validKibana setting names.
All information that you include in environment variables is visible through the ps
command, including sensitive information.
Some example translations are shown here:
Table 1. Example Docker Environment Variables
Environment Variable | Kibana Setting |
|
|
|
|
|
|
In general, any setting listed in Configure Kibana can be configured with this technique.
Supplying array options can be tricky. The following example shows the syntax for providing an array to ELASTICSEARCH_HOSTS
.
These variables can be set with docker-compose
like this:
Since environment variables are translated to CLI arguments, they takeprecedence over settings configured in kibana.yml
.
Docker defaultsedit
The following settings have different default values when using the Dockerimages:
|
|
|
|
|
|
Install Elasticsearch Kibana Logstash Docker
These settings are defined in the default kibana.yml
. They can be overriddenwith a custom kibana.yml
or viaenvironment variables.
If replacing kibana.yml
with a custom version, be sure to copy thedefaults to the custom file if you want to retain them. If not, they willbe 'masked' by the new file.