Elasticsearch can be quickly started for development or testing use with the following command:

docker run -p 9200:9200 -p 9300:9300 -e "discovery.type=single-node" docker.elastic.co/elasticsearch/elasticsearch:7.0.1

The vm.max_map_count kernel setting needs to be set to at least 262144 for production use. Depending on your platform:

• Linux

  The vm.max_map_count setting should be set permanently in /etc/sysctl.conf:

  $ grep vm.max_map_count /etc/sysctl.conf
  vm.max_map_count=262144

  To apply the setting on a live system type: sysctl -w vm.max_map_count=262144

• macOS with Docker for Mac

  The vm.max_map_count setting must be set within the xhyve virtual machine:

  $ screen ~/Library/Containers/com.docker.docker/Data/vms/0/tty

  Just press enter and configure the sysctl setting as you would for Linux:

  sysctl -w vm.max_map_count=262144

• Windows and macOS with Docker Toolbox

  The vm.max_map_count setting must be set via docker-machine:

  docker-machine ssh
  sudo sysctl -w vm.max_map_count=262144

The following example brings up a cluster comprising two Elasticsearch nodes. To bring up the cluster, use the docker-compose.yml and just type:

docker-compose up

docker-compose is not pre-installed with Docker on Linux. Instructions for installing it can be found on the Docker Compose webpage.

The node es01 listens on localhost:9200 while es02 talks to es01 over a Docker network.

This example also uses Docker named volumes, called esdata01 and esdata02 which will be created if not already present.

docker-compose.yml:

version: '2.2'
services:
  es01:
    image: docker.elastic.co/elasticsearch/elasticsearch:7.0.1
    container_name: es01
    environment:
      - node.name=es01
      - discovery.seed_hosts=es02
      - cluster.initial_master_nodes=es01,es02
      - cluster.name=docker-cluster
      - bootstrap.memory_lock=true
      - "ES_JAVA_OPTS=-Xms512m -Xmx512m"
    ulimits:
      memlock:
        soft: -1
        hard: -1
    volumes:
      - esdata01:/usr/share/elasticsearch/data
    ports:
      - 9200:9200
    networks:
      - esnet
  es02:
    image: docker.elastic.co/elasticsearch/elasticsearch:7.0.1
    container_name: es02
    environment:
      - node.name=es02
      - discovery.seed_hosts=es01
      - cluster.initial_master_nodes=es01,es02
      - cluster.name=docker-cluster
      - bootstrap.memory_lock=true
      - "ES_JAVA_OPTS=-Xms512m -Xmx512m"
    ulimits:
      memlock:
        soft: -1
        hard: -1
    volumes:
      - esdata02:/usr/share/elasticsearch/data
    networks:
      - esnet

volumes:
  esdata01:
    driver: local
  esdata02:
    driver: local

networks:
  esnet:

To stop the cluster, type docker-compose down. Data volumes will persist, so it’s possible to start the cluster again with the same data using docker-compose up. To destroy the cluster and the data volumes, just type docker-compose down -v.

curl http://127.0.0.1:9200/_cat/health
1472225929 15:38:49 docker-cluster green 2 2 4 2 0 0 0 0 - 100.0%

Log messages go to the console and are handled by the configured Docker logging driver. By default you can access logs with docker logs.

For example, to define the cluster name with docker run you can pass -e "cluster.name=mynewclustername". Double quotes are required.

Create your custom config file and mount this over the image’s corresponding file. For example, bind-mounting a custom_elasticsearch.yml with docker run can be accomplished with the parameter:

-v full_path_to/custom_elasticsearch.yml:/usr/share/elasticsearch/config/elasticsearch.yml

The container runs Elasticsearch as user elasticsearch using uid:gid 1000:1000. Bind mounted host directories and files, such as custom_elasticsearch.yml above, need to be accessible by this user. For the data and log dirs, such as /usr/share/elasticsearch/data, write access is required as well. Also see note 1 below.

In some environments, it may make more sense to prepare a custom image containing your configuration. A Dockerfile to achieve this may be as simple as:

FROM docker.elastic.co/elasticsearch/elasticsearch:7.0.1
COPY --chown=elasticsearch:elasticsearch elasticsearch.yml /usr/share/elasticsearch/config/

You could then build and try the image with something like:

docker build --tag=elasticsearch-custom .
docker run -ti -v /usr/share/elasticsearch/data elasticsearch-custom

Some plugins require additional security permissions. You have to explicitly accept them either by attaching a tty when you run the Docker image and accepting yes at the prompts, or inspecting the security permissions separately and if you are comfortable with them adding the --batch flag to the plugin install command. See Plugin Management documentation for more details.

Options can be passed as command-line options to the Elasticsearch process by overriding the default command for the image. For example:

docker run <various parameters> bin/elasticsearch -Ecluster.name=mynewclustername