[[discovery]]
== Discovery Plugins

Discovery plugins extend Elasticsearch by adding new discovery mechanisms that
can be used instead of {ref}/modules-discovery-zen.html[Zen Discovery].

[float]
==== Core discovery plugins

The core discovery plugins are:

<<cloud-aws,AWS Cloud>>::

The Amazon Web Service (AWS) Cloud plugin uses the
https://github.com/aws/aws-sdk-java[AWS API] for unicast discovery, and adds
support for using S3 as a repository for
{ref}/modules-snapshots.html[Snapshot/Restore].

<<cloud-azure,Azure Cloud>>::

The Azure Cloud plugin uses the Azure API for unicast discovery, and adds
support for using Azure as a repository for
{ref}/modules-snapshots.html[Snapshot/Restore].

<<cloud-gce,GCE Cloud>>::

The Google Compute Engine Cloud plugin uses the GCE API for unicast discovery.

<<discovery-multicast,Multicast>>::

The multicast plugin sends multicast messages to discover other nodes in the cluster.

[float]
==== Community contributed discovery plugins

A number of discovery plugins have been contributed by our community:

* https://github.com/grantr/elasticsearch-srv-discovery[DNS SRV Discovery Plugin] (by Grant Rodgers)
* https://github.com/shikhar/eskka[eskka Discovery Plugin] (by Shikhar Bhushan)
* https://github.com/grmblfrz/elasticsearch-zookeeper[ZooKeeper Discovery Plugin] (by Sonian Inc.)

include::cloud-aws.asciidoc[]

include::cloud-azure.asciidoc[]

include::cloud-gce.asciidoc[]

include::discovery-multicast.asciidoc[]