Azure Cloud Plugin for ElasticSearch

The Azure Cloud plugin allows to use Azure API for the unicast discovery mechanism.

In order to install the plugin, simply run: bin/plugin -install elasticsearch/elasticsearch-cloud-azure/1.0.0.

Azure Cloud Plugin	ElasticSearch	Release date
1.1.0-SNAPSHOT (master)	0.90.6
1.0.0	0.90.6	2013-11-12

Azure Virtual Machine Discovery

Azure VM discovery allows to use the azure APIs to perform automatic discovery (similar to multicast in non hostile multicast environments). Here is a simple sample configuration:

    cloud:
        azure:
            keystore: /path/to/keystore
            password: your_password_for_keystore
            subscription_id: your_azure_subscription_id
            service_name: your_azure_cloud_service_name
    discovery:
            type: azure

How to start (short story)

• Create Azure instances
• Install Elasticsearch
• Install Azure plugin
• Modify elasticsearch.yml file
• Start Elasticsearch

How to start (long story)

We will expose here one strategy which is to hide our Elasticsearch cluster from outside.

With this strategy, only VM behind this same virtual port can talk to each other. That means that with this mode, you can use elasticsearch unicast discovery to build a cluster.

Best, you can use the elasticsearch-cloud-azure plugin to let it fetch information about your nodes using azure API.

Prerequisites

Before starting, you need to have:

• A Windows Azure account
• SSH keys and certificate

Here is a description on how to generate this using openssl:

# You may want to use another dir than /tmp
cd /tmp
openssl req -x509 -nodes -days 365 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout azure-private.key -out azure-certificate.pem
chmod 600 azure-private.key
openssl x509 -outform der -in azure-certificate.pem -out azure-certificate.cer

See this guide to have more details on how to create keys for Azure.

Once done, you need to upload your certificate in Azure:

• Go to the management console.
• Sign in using your account.
• Click on Portal.
• Go to Settings (bottom of the left list)
• On the bottom bar, click on Upload and upload your azure-certificate.cer file.

You may want to use Windows Azure Command-Line Tool:

• Install NodeJS, for example using homebrew on MacOS X:

brew install node

• Install Azure tools:

sudo npm install azure-cli -g

• Download and import your azure settings:

# This will open a browser and will download a .publishsettings file
azure account download

# Import this file (we have downloaded it to /tmp)
# Note, it will create needed files in ~/.azure
azure account import /tmp/azure.publishsettings

Creating your first instance

You need to have a storage account available. Check Azure Blob Storage documentation for more information.

You will need to choose the operating system you want to run on. To get a list of official available images, run:

azure vm list

Let's say we are going to deploy an Ubuntu image on an extra small instance in West Europe:

• Azure cluster name: azure-elasticsearch-cluster
• Image: b39f27a8b8c64d52b05eac6a62ebad85__Ubuntu-13_10-amd64-server-20130808-alpha3-en-us-30GB
• VM Name: myesnode1
• VM Size: extrasmall
• Location: West Europe
• Login: elasticsearch
• Password: password1234!!

Using command line:

azure vm create azure-elasticsearch-cluster \
                b39f27a8b8c64d52b05eac6a62ebad85__Ubuntu-13_10-amd64-server-20130808-alpha3-en-us-30GB \
                --vm-name myesnode1 \
                --location "West Europe" \
                --vm-size extrasmall \
                --ssh 22 \
                --ssh-cert /tmp/azure-certificate.pem \
                elasticsearch password1234!!

You should see something like:

info:    Executing command vm create
+ Looking up image
+ Looking up cloud service
+ Creating cloud service
+ Retrieving storage accounts
+ Configuring certificate
+ Creating VM
info:    vm create command OK

Now, your first instance is started. You need to install Elasticsearch on it.

Note on SSH

You need to give the private key and username each time you log on your instance:

ssh -i ~/.ssh/azure-private.key elasticsearch@myescluster.cloudapp.net

But you can also define it once in ~/.ssh/config file:

Host *.cloudapp.net
 User elasticsearch
 StrictHostKeyChecking no
 UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null
 IdentityFile ~/.ssh/azure-private.key

# First, copy your azure certificate on this machine
scp /tmp/azure.publishsettings azure-elasticsearch-cluster.cloudapp.net:/tmp

# Then, connect to your instance using SSH
ssh azure-elasticsearch-cluster.cloudapp.net

Once connected, install Elasticsearch:

# Install Latest OpenJDK
# If you would like to use Oracle JDK instead, read the following:
# http://www.webupd8.org/2012/01/install-oracle-java-jdk-7-in-ubuntu-via.html
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jre-headless

# Download Elasticsearch
curl -s https://download.elasticsearch.org/elasticsearch/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-0.90.6.deb -o elasticsearch-0.90.6.deb

# Prepare Elasticsearch installation
sudo dpkg -i elasticsearch-0.90.6.deb

Check that elasticsearch is running:

curl http://localhost:9200/

This command should give you a JSON result:

{
  "ok" : true,
  "status" : 200,
  "name" : "Grey, Dr. John",
  "version" : {
    "number" : "0.90.6",
    "build_hash" : "e2a24efdde0cb7cc1b2071ffbbd1fd874a6d8d6b",
    "build_timestamp" : "2013-11-04T13:44:16Z",
    "build_snapshot" : false,
    "lucene_version" : "4.5.1"
  },
  "tagline" : "You Know, for Search"
}

Install nodejs and Azure tools

# Install node (aka download and compile source)
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install python-software-properties python g++ make
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:chris-lea/node.js
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nodejs

# Install Azure tools
sudo npm install azure-cli -g

# Install your azure certficate
azure account import /tmp/azure.publishsettings

# Remove tmp file
rm /tmp/azure.publishsettings

Generate a keystore

openssl req -x509 -nodes -days 365 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout azure-private.key -out azure-certificate.pem
chmod 600 azure-private.key
openssl x509 -outform der -in azure-certificate.pem -out azure-certificate.cer
# Transform private key to PEM format
openssl pkcs8 -topk8 -nocrypt -in azure-private.key -inform PEM -out azure-pk.pem -outform PEM
# Transform certificate to PEM format
openssl x509 -inform der -in azure-certificate.cer -out azure-cert.pem
cat azure-cert.pem azure-pk.pem > azure.pem.txt
# You MUST enter a password!
openssl pkcs12 -export -in azure.pem.txt -out azurekeystore.pkcs12 -name azure -noiter -nomaciter

Upload the generated key to Azure platform. Important: when prompted for a password, you need to enter a non empty one.

azure service cert create azure-elasticsearch-cluster azure-certificate.cer

Install elasticsearch cloud azure plugin

# Stop elasticsearch
sudo service elasticsearch stop

# Install the plugin
sudo /usr/share/elasticsearch/bin/plugin -install elasticsearch/elasticsearch-cloud-azure/1.0.0

# Configure it
sudo vi /etc/elasticsearch/elasticsearch.yml

And add the following lines:

# If you don't remember your account id, you may get it with `azure account list`
    cloud:
        azure:
            keystore: /home/elasticsearch/azurekeystore.pkcs12
            password: your_password_for_keystore
            subscription_id: your_azure_subscription_id
            service_name: your_azure_cloud_service_name
    discovery:
            type: azure

Restart elasticsearch:

sudo service elasticsearch start

If anything goes wrong, check your logs in /var/log/elasticsearch.

Scaling Out!

You need first to create an image of your previous machine. Disconnect from your machine and run locally the following commands:

# Shutdown the instance
azure vm shutdown myesnode1

# Create an image from this instance (it could take some minutes)
azure vm capture myesnode1 esnode-image --delete

# Note that the previous instance has been deleted (mandatory)
# So you need to create it again and BTW create other instances.

azure vm create azure-elasticsearch-cluster \
                esnode-image \
                --vm-name myesnode1 \
                --location "West Europe" \
                --vm-size extrasmall \
                --ssh 22 \
                --ssh-cert /tmp/azure-certificate.pem \
                elasticsearch password1234!!

Note: It could happen that azure changes the endpoint public IP address. DNS propagation could take some minutes before you can connect again using name. You can get from azure the IP address if needed, using:

# Look at Network `Endpoints 0 Vip`
azure vm show myesnode1

Let's start more instances!

for x in $(seq  2 10)
	do
		echo "Launching azure instance #$x..."
		azure vm create azure-elasticsearch-cluster \
		                esnode-image \
		                --vm-name myesnode$x \
		                --vm-size extrasmall \
		                --ssh $((21 + $x)) \
		                --ssh-cert /tmp/azure-certificate.pem \
		                --connect \
		                elasticsearch password1234!!
	done

If you want to remove your running instances:

azure vm delete myesnode1

License

This software is licensed under the Apache 2 license, quoted below.

Copyright 2009-2013 ElasticSearch <http://www.elasticsearch.org>

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not
use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of
the License at

    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT
WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the
License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under
the License.