OpenSearch 3 Search and Analytics

This is a repackaged open source software product wherein additional charges apply for cloudimg support services.

## OpenSearch 3 - Ready-to-Run Search and Analytics on AWS

This is a repackaged open source software product wherein additional charges apply for cloudimg support services.

OpenSearch is the open source distributed search and analytics engine forked from Elasticsearch. This AMI delivers OpenSearch 3.6 and OpenSearch Dashboards 3.6 fully installed and running as systemd services, giving DevOps teams and platform engineers a complete search and analytics platform within minutes of launch - eliminating hours of manual installation, dependency resolution, and security hardening.

## Why This AMI Over Manual Deployment or Competing Images

• Minutes to first query, not hours: Both OpenSearch and Dashboards start automatically on boot. No package installation, no YAML editing, no plugin configuration required.
• No shared or default credentials: Unlike images that ship with known passwords, every instance generates a unique 20-character admin password on first boot, eliminating credential-sharing risk.
• Isolated data storage: A dedicated 30 GiB gp3 EBS volume for index data means you can resize storage independently without risking your OS root disk - flexibility that managed services often restrict.

## Software Stack

• OpenSearch 3.6.0 running as a systemd service with the security plugin enabled (TLS/HTTPS support, role-based access control)
• OpenSearch Dashboards 3.6.0 providing the web UI for index management, visualization, and data exploration
• Both services run under a dedicated system user for process isolation
• Ubuntu base with regular security updates

## Secure First Boot

On first boot, a one-shot systemd service generates a fresh 20-character admin password unique to that instance, configures it via the OpenSearch security plugin, and stores the plain text value in a root-only credentials file (/root/.opensearch_credentials). No shared or default credentials remain in the running image. This approach helps teams meet access-control requirements without manual post-launch hardening.

## Dedicated Data Disk

OpenSearch index data lives on a separate 30 GiB gp3 EBS volume mounted at /var/lib/opensearch/data. This architecture lets you resize or snapshot index storage independently of the OS root disk - reducing operational risk during scaling events and simplifying backup workflows.

## Encryption and Network Security

The OpenSearch security plugin supports TLS/HTTPS on ports 9200 and 5601. The EBS data volume supports AWS encryption at rest via KMS. For production deployments, we recommend launching in a private VPC subnet with security group rules restricting ingress to ports 9200, 5601, and 22 from trusted CIDR ranges only.

## AWS Integrations

This AMI works with common AWS services and open source tools for data ingestion and monitoring:

• Amazon S3 - Use snapshot/restore to back up indexes to S3 or ingest data from S3 buckets
• Amazon CloudWatch - Forward instance and application metrics for centralized monitoring
• Fluent Bit / Logstash - Ship logs from containerized workloads or EC2 instances into OpenSearch for analysis
• Prometheus and Grafana - Monitor OpenSearch cluster health metrics alongside your existing observability stack

## Use Case: Log Analytics for Containerized Workloads

A DevOps team running microservices on Amazon ECS or EKS can deploy this AMI as a single-node log analytics backend. Fluent Bit sidecars ship structured JSON logs to the OpenSearch REST API on port 9200. OpenSearch Dashboards on port 5601 provides real-time visualization of error rates, latency percentiles, and deployment events - suitable for environments ingesting up to tens of gigabytes per day on appropriately sized instances.

## Additional Use Cases

• Application search and full-text search
• E-commerce product search and faceted navigation
• Security information and event management (SIEM)
• Real-time data ingestion and dashboarding

## cloudimg Support

24/7 technical support by email and live chat. Our engineers help with OpenSearch deployment, index management, search query optimization, dashboards, cluster configuration, and performance tuning. Critical issues receive a one-hour average response.

## Get Started

Launch the AMI, retrieve your unique admin password from /root/.opensearch_credentials, and begin indexing data via the REST API on port 9200 or explore your data through Dashboards on port 5601.

All product and company names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. Use of them does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by them.