From 1d8d8ea55f7c4845c98e083a6572d256cd2e2e96 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Jason Tedor <jason@tedor.me>
Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2016 16:34:21 -0400
Subject: [PATCH] Clarify production mode for bootstrap checks

This commit clarifies that production mode for the bootstrap checks is
only tripped if transport is bound to an external interface.

Relates #21220
---
 .../reference/setup/bootstrap-checks.asciidoc | 20 ++++++++++++-------
 1 file changed, 13 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-)

diff --git a/docs/reference/setup/bootstrap-checks.asciidoc b/docs/reference/setup/bootstrap-checks.asciidoc
index 8c1bab474c8..cb9b8f106c7 100644
--- a/docs/reference/setup/bootstrap-checks.asciidoc
+++ b/docs/reference/setup/bootstrap-checks.asciidoc
@@ -23,14 +23,20 @@ documented individually.
 [float]
 === Development vs. production mode
 
-By default, Elasticsearch binds and publishes to `localhost`. This is
+By default, Elasticsearch binds to `localhost` for <<modules-http,HTTP>>
+and <<modules-transport,transport (internal)>> communication. This is
 fine for downloading and playing with Elasticsearch, and everyday
-development but it's useless for production systems. For a production
-installation to be reachable, it must either bind or publish to an
-external interface. Thus, we consider Elasticsearch to be in development
-mode if it does not bind nor publish to an external interface (the
-default), and is otherwise in production mode if it does bind or publish
-to an external interface.
+development but it's useless for production systems. To form a cluster,
+Elasticsearch instances must be reachable via transport communication so
+they must bind transport to an external interface. Thus, we consider an
+Elaticsearch instance to be in development mode if it does not bind
+transport to an external interface (the default), and is otherwise in
+production mode if it does bind transport to an external interface. Note
+that HTTP can be configured independently of transport via
+<<modules-http,`http.host>> and
+<<modules-transport,`transport.tcp.host`>>; this can be useful for
+configuring a single instance to be reachable via HTTP for testing
+purposes without triggering production mode.
 
 === Heap size check