Metadata in Elasticsearch

What it is

Metadata in Elasticsearch refers to storing some additional information for each document. This is achieved using the specific metadata fields available in Elasticsearch. The default behavior of some of these metadata fields can be customized during mapping creation.

Examples

Using _meta meta-field for storing application-specific information with the mapping:

PUT /my_index?pretty
{
  "mappings": {
    "_meta": { 
      "domain": "security",
      "release_information": {
        "date": "18-01-2020",
        "version": "7.5"
      }
    }
  }
}

Notes

• In version 2.x, Elasticsearch had a total 13 meta fields available, which are: _index, _uid, _type, _id, _source, _size, _all, _field_names, _timestamp, _ttl, _parent, _routing, _meta
• In version 5.x, _timestamp and _ttl meta fields were removed.
• In version 6.x, the _parent meta field was removed.
• In version 7.x, _uid and _all meta fields were removed.

Plugin in Elasticsearch

What it is

A plugin is used to enhance the core functionalities of Elasticsearch. Elasticsearch provides some core plugins as a part of their release installation. In addition to those core plugins, it is possible to write your own custom plugins as well. There are several community plugins available on GitHub for various use cases.

Examples:

• Get all the instructions for the plugin usage

sudo bin/elasticsearch-plugin -h

• Installing S3 plugin using URL for storing Elasticsearch snapshots on S3

sudo bin/elasticsearch-plugin install repository-s3

• Removing a plugin

sudo bin/elasticsearch-plugin remove repository-s3

• Installing a plugin using the file path

sudo bin/elasticsearch-plugin install file:///path/to/plugin.zip

Notes:

• Plugins are installed and removed using the elasticsearch-plugin script, which ships as a part of Elasticsearch installation and can be found inside the bin/ directory of the Elasticsearch installation path.
• A plugin has to be installed on every node of the cluster and each of the nodes has to be restarted to make the plugin visible.
• You can also download the plugin manually and then install it using the elasticsearch-plugin install command, providing the file name/path of the plugin’s source file.
• When a plugin is removed, you will need to restart every elasticsearch node in order to complete the removal process.

Common Problems:

• Managing permission issues during and after plugin installation is the most common problem. If Elasticsearch was installed using the deb or rpm package then the plugin has to be installed using the root user, or else you can install the plugin as the user that owns all of the Elasticsearch files.

• In case of deb or rpm package installation, it is important to check the permission of the plugins directory after plugin installation and update the permission if it has been modified using the following command:

chown -R elasticsearch:elasticsearch path_to_plugin_directory 

• If your Elasticsearch nodes are running in a private subnet without internet access, you cannot install a plugin directly. In this case, you can simply download the plugins at once and copy the files inside the plugins directory of the Elasticsearch installation path on every node. The node has to be restarted in this case as well.