Some settings are sensitive, and relying on filesystem permissions to protect their values is not sufficient. For this use case, Elasticsearch provides a keystore and the elasticsearch-keystore tool to manage the settings in the keystore.

All commands here should be run as the user which will run Elasticsearch.

Only some settings are designed to be read from the keystore. See documentation for each setting to see if it is supported as part of the keystore.

All the modifications to the keystore take affect only after restarting Elasticsearch.

The elasticsearch keystore currently only provides obfuscation. In the future, password protection will be added.

These settings, just like the regular ones in the elasticsearch.yml config file, need to be specified on each node in the cluster. Currently, all secure settings are node-specific settings that must have the same value on every node.

Creating the keystore

To create the elasticsearch.keystore, use the create command:

bin/elasticsearch-keystore create

The file elasticsearch.keystore will be created alongside elasticsearch.yml.

Listing settings in the keystore

A list of the settings in the keystore is available with the list command:

bin/elasticsearch-keystore list

Adding string settings

Sensitive string settings, like authentication credentials for cloud plugins, can be added using the add command:

bin/elasticsearch-keystore add the.setting.name.to.set

The tool will prompt for the value of the setting. To pass the value through stdin, use the --stdin flag:

cat /file/containing/setting/value | bin/elasticsearch-keystore add --stdin the.setting.name.to.set

Adding file settings

You can add sensitive files, like authentication key files for cloud plugins, using the add-file command. Be sure to include your file path as an argument after the setting name.

bin/elasticsearch-keystore add-file the.setting.name.to.set /path/example-file.json

Removing settings

To remove a setting from the keystore, use the remove command:

bin/elasticsearch-keystore remove the.setting.name.to.remove

Reloadable secure settings

Just like the settings values in elasticsearch.yml, changes to the keystore contents are not automatically applied to the running elasticsearch node. Re-reading settings requires a node restart. However, certain secure settings are marked as reloadable. Such settings can be re-read and applied on a running node.

The values of all secure settings, reloadable or not, must be identical across all cluster nodes. After making the desired secure settings changes, using the bin/elasticsearch-keystore add command, call:

POST _nodes/reload_secure_settings

This API will decrypt and re-read the entire keystore, on every cluster node, but only the reloadable secure settings will be applied. Changes to other settings will not go into effect until the next restart. Once the call returns, the reload has been completed, meaning that all internal datastructures dependent on these settings have been changed. Everything should look as if the settings had the new value from the start.

When changing multiple reloadable secure settings, modify all of them, on each cluster node, and then issue a reload_secure_settings call, instead of reloading after each modification.