Getting ready

You need a working ElasticSearch installation.

How to do it...

The steps required for setting up a simple node are as follows:

How it works...

The path.conf file defines the directory that contains your configuration: mainly elasticsearch.yml and logging.yml. The default location is $ES_HOME/config with ES_HOME your install directory.

The path.data file is the most important one: it allows defining one or more directories where you store index data. When you define more than one directory, they are managed similarly to a RAID 0 configuration (the total space is the sum of all the data directory entry points), favoring locations with the most free space.

The path.work file is a location where ElasticSearch puts temporary files.

The path.log file is where log files are put. The control how to log is managed in logging.yml.

The path.plugins file allows overriding the plugins path (default $ES_HOME/plugins). It's useful to put "system wide" plugins.

The main parameters used to control the index and shard is index.number_of_shards, that controls the standard number of shards for a new created index, and index.number_of_replicas that controls the initial number of replicas.

There's more...

There are a lot of other parameters that can be used to customize your ElasticSearch installation and new ones are added with new releases. The most important ones are described in this recipe and in the next one.

See also