Question 1

What Elasticsearch migrations do you handle?

Accepted Answer

Elasticsearch → OpenSearch (the canonical SSPL/ELv2-driven migration), self-managed → Elastic Cloud or Elastic Cloud Enterprise onboarding, Elastic Cloud → Amazon OpenSearch Service (cost-driven migrations), ES 7.x → 8.x version upgrades (with breaking-change handling), index reindexing for major version jumps, Kibana → OpenSearch Dashboards conversion. For the engine-decision phase, see Elasticsearch consulting.

Question 2

ES → OpenSearch — what's the playbook?

Accepted Answer

From ES 7.10: snapshot/restore migrates cleanly (same lineage point as OpenSearch fork). From ES 8.x: reindex-from-remote is required because index formats diverged. Query DSL is mostly compatible since 2021 but with edge cases — validate against staging. Dashboards: Kibana 7.10 imports cleanly to OpenSearch Dashboards; 8.x Kibana dashboards need manual conversion. Security plugin migration (X-Pack Security → OpenSearch Security, forked from Search Guard) has different config models and is usually the largest piece of work.

Question 3

ES 7.x → 8.x upgrade — what breaks?

Accepted Answer

Major version jumps have breaking changes: removal of mapping types (you should have moved off these by 8.x anyway), tightened security defaults (TLS required, security on by default), removed legacy clients, deprecated APIs cleaned up. Index format incompatibility means you can't directly upgrade indices created before 7.0; reindex required. We audit existing usage against 8.x breaking changes before any upgrade timeline gets committed.

Question 4

Elastic Cloud onboarding — what's the path?

Accepted Answer

Self-managed → Elastic Cloud: snapshot to S3-compatible storage, restore on Elastic Cloud deployment. Sizing: pick deployment template (Hot-warm-cold-frozen tier ratios), allocate JVM heap (50% of node RAM up to 31GB), configure replicas. Pricing-wise: Elastic Cloud is per-RCU (Resource Component Unit) — model against your actual data + query throughput. For multi-cloud, Elastic Cloud runs on AWS/Azure/GCP with consistent pricing.

Question 5

Cost migration — Elastic Cloud → Amazon OpenSearch Service?

Accepted Answer

Common for AWS-resident workloads where Amazon OpenSearch Service pricing (~30% cheaper for equivalent workloads) tips the math. Path: snapshot to S3 → Amazon OpenSearch Service import. Feature-gap audit critical: ELSER (Elastic-only), ESQL (Elastic-only), Universal Profiling (Elastic-only) don't exist on OpenSearch. For workloads using only standard ES features, migration is feasible; for ELSER-heavy RAG workloads, the migration may require replacing the retrieval architecture.

Question 6

Kibana → OpenSearch Dashboards conversion?

Accepted Answer

OpenSearch Dashboards is a fork of Kibana 7.10. From Kibana 7.10: dashboards import cleanly. From Kibana 8.x: significant manual conversion — Elastic-proprietary apps (APM, Synthetics, ESQL editor, Universal Profiling) don't exist in OpenSearch Dashboards. Index pattern semantics differ slightly. We do a dashboard inventory + conversion-effort estimate before committing to the migration timeline.

Question 7

Cutover playbook for zero-downtime?

Accepted Answer

Standard: (1) provision target with sized topology, (2) take snapshot of source to shared snapshot repo, (3) restore on target, (4) configure cross-cluster replication for catch-up writes, (5) wait for replication lag to settle, (6) flip reads to target — observe query latency + error rate, (7) quiesce writes on source briefly, (8) promote target, (9) cut application endpoints, (10) 24-48 hour soak with source kept replicated as rollback, (11) decommission source.

Elasticsearch Migration Services

Elasticsearch migrations we handle

Elasticsearch migration — common questions

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