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See the Elasticsearch documentation for more information.

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Supported versions

You can select the major and minor version. Patch versions are applied periodically for bug fixes and the like. When you deploy your app, you always get the latest available patches.

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Enterprise edition

Premium Service

Elasticsearch versions 7.11 or later are no longer included in any Upsun plan. You need to add it separately at an additional cost. To add Elasticsearch, contact Sales.

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Deprecated versions

The following versions are still available in your projects for free, but they’re at their end of life and are no longer receiving security updates from upstream. To ensure your project remains stable in the future, switch to a premium version. Alternatively, you can switch to one of the latest, free versions of OpenSearch. To do so, follow the same procedure as for upgrading.

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Relationship reference

For each service defined via a relationship to your application, Upsun automatically generates corresponding environment variables within your application container, in the $<RELATIONSHIP-NAME>_<SERVICE-PROPERTY> format. Here is example information available through the service environment variables themselves, or through the PLATFORM_RELATIONSHIPS environment variable.
You can obtain the complete list of available service environment variables in your app container by running upsun ssh env.Note that the information about the relationship can change when an app is redeployed or restarted or the relationship is changed. So your apps should only rely on the service environment variables directly rather than hard coding any values.
For premium versions, the service type is elasticsearch-enterprise.

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Usage example

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1. Configure the service

To define the service, use the elasticsearch type: If you’re using a premium version, use the elasticsearch-enterprise type instead. Note that changing the name of the service replaces it with a brand new service and all existing data is lost. Back up your data before changing the service.

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2. Define the relationship

To define the relationship, use the following configuration:
You can define SERVICE_NAME as you like, so long as it’s unique between all defined services and matches in both the application and services configuration.The example above leverages default endpoint configuration for relationships. That is, it uses default endpoints behind the scenes, providing a relationship (the network address a service is accessible from) that is identical to the name of that service.Depending on your needs, instead of default endpoint configuration, you can use explicit endpoint configuration.With the above definition, the application container now has access to the service via the relationship SERVICE_NAME and its corresponding service environment variables.

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Example configuration

If you’re using a premium version, use the elasticsearch-enterprise type instead.

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Use in app

To use the configured service in your app, add a configuration file similar to the following to your project. Note that configuration for premium versions may differ slightly. This configuration defines a single application (myapp), whose source code exists in the <PROJECT_ROOT>/myapp directory.
myapp has access to the elasticsearch service, via the corresponding service environment variables (as per default endpoint configuration for relationships). From this, myapp can retrieve access credentials to the service through the relationship environment variable.
myapp/.environment
# Set environment variables for individual credentials,
# For more information, please visit https://docs.upsun.com/development/variables.html#service-environment-variables.
export ELASTIC_SCHEME="${ELASTICSEARCH_SCHEME}"
export ELASTIC_HOST="${ELASTICSEARCH_HOST}"
export ELASTIC_PORT="${ELASTICSEARCH_PORT}"

# Surface more common Elasticsearch connection string variables for use in app.
export ELASTIC_USERNAME="${ELASTICSEARCH_USERNAME}"
export ELASTIC_PASSWORD="${ELASTICSEARCH_PASSWORD}"
export ELASTIC_HOSTS=["$ELASTIC_SCHEME://$ELASTIC_HOST:$ELASTIC_PORT"]
The above file — .environment in the myapp directory — is automatically sourced by Upsun into the runtime environment, so that the variable ELASTIC_HOSTS can be used within the application to connect to the service. Note that ELASTIC_HOSTS, and all Upsun-service environment variables like ELASTICSEARCH_HOST, are environment-dependent. Unlike the build produced for a given commit, they can’t be reused across environments and only allow your app to connect to a single service instance on a single environment. A file very similar to this is generated automatically for your when using the upsun ify command to migrate a codebase to Upsun.
When you create an index on Elasticsearch, don’t specify the number_of_shards or number_of_replicas settings in your Elasticsearch API call. These values are set automatically based on available resources.

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Authentication

By default, Elasticsearch has no authentication. No username or password is required to connect to it. Starting with Elasticsearch 7.2 you may optionally enable HTTP Basic authentication. To do so, include the following in your .upsun/config.yaml configuration: If you’re using a premium version, use the elasticsearch-enterprise type. That enables mandatory HTTP Basic auth on all requests. The credentials are available in any relationships that point at that service, in the username and password properties. You can obtain the complete list of available service environment variables in your app container by running upsun ssh env. Note that the information about the relationship can change when an app is redeployed or restarted or the relationship is changed. So your apps should only rely on the service environment variables directly rather than hard coding any values. This functionality is generally not required if Elasticsearch isn’t exposed on its own public HTTP route. However, certain applications may require it, or it allows you to safely expose Elasticsearch directly to the web. To do so, add a route to .upsun/config.yaml that has elasticsearch:elasticsearch as its upstream (where elasticsearch is whatever you named the service). For example:

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Plugins

Elasticsearch offers a number of plugins. To enable them, list them under the configuration.plugins key in your .upsun/config.yaml file, like so: If you’re using a premium version, use the elasticsearch-enterprise type. In this example you’d have the ICU analysis plugin and Python script support plugin. If there is a publicly available plugin you need that isn’t listed here, contact support.

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Available plugins

This is the complete list of official Elasticsearch plugins that can be enabled:
PluginDescription2.45.x6.x7.x8.x
analysis-icuSupport ICU Unicode text analysis*****
analysis-noriIntegrates Lucene Nori analysis module into Elasticsearch***
analysis-kuromojiJapanese language support*****
analysis-smartcnSmart Chinese Analysis Plugins*****
analysis-stempelStempel Polish Analysis Plugin*****
analysis-phoneticPhonetic analysis*****
analysis-ukrainianUkrainian language support****
cloud-awsAWS Cloud plugin, allows storing indices on AWS S3*
delete-by-querySupport for deleting documents matching a given query*
discovery-multicastAbility to form a cluster using TCP/IP multicast messages*
ingest-attachmentExtract file attachments in common formats (such as PPT, XLS, and PDF)****
ingest-user-agentExtracts details from the user agent string a browser sends with its web requests**
lang-javascriptJavaScript language plugin, allows the use of JavaScript in Elasticsearch scripts*
lang-pythonPython language plugin, allows the use of Python in Elasticsearch scripts**
mapper-annotated-textAdds support for text fields with markup used to inject annotation tokens into the index***
mapper-attachmentsMapper attachments plugin for indexing common file types**
mapper-murmur3Murmur3 mapper plugin for computing hashes at index-time*****
mapper-sizeSize mapper plugin, enables the _size meta field*****
repository-s3Support for using S3 as a repository for Snapshot/Restore****
transport-nioSupport for NIO transport**

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Plugin removal

Removing plugins previously added in your .upsun/config.yaml file doesn’t automatically uninstall them from your Elasticsearch instances. This is deliberate, as removing a plugin may result in data loss or corruption of existing data that relied on that plugin. Removing a plugin usually requires reindexing. To permanently remove a previously enabled plugin, upgrade the service to create a new instance of Elasticsearch and migrate to it. In most cases it isn’t necessary as an unused plugin has no appreciable impact on the server.

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Upgrading

The Elasticsearch data format sometimes changes between versions in incompatible ways. Elasticsearch doesn’t include a data upgrade mechanism as it’s expected that all indexes can be regenerated from stable data if needed. To upgrade (or downgrade) Elasticsearch, use a new service from scratch. There are two ways to do so.

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Destructive

In your .upsun/config.yaml file, change the version and name of your Elasticsearch service. Be sure to also update the reference to the now changed service name in its corresponding application’s relationship block. When you push that to Upsun, the old service is deleted and a new one with the new name is created with no data. You can then have your application reindex data as appropriate. This approach has the downsides of temporarily having an empty Elasticsearch instance, which your application may or may not handle gracefully, and needing to rebuild your index afterward. Depending on the size of your data that could take a while.

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Transitional

With a transitional approach, you temporarily have two Elasticsearch services. Add a second Elasticsearch service with the new version, a new name, and give it a new relationship in .upsun/config.yaml. You can optionally run in that configuration for a while to allow your application to populate indexes in the new service as well. Once you’re ready to switch over, remove the old Elasticsearch service and relationship. You may optionally have the new Elasticsearch service use the old relationship name if that’s easier for your app to handle. Your application is now using the new Elasticsearch service. This approach has the benefit of never being without a working Elasticsearch instance. On the downside, it requires two running Elasticsearch servers temporarily, each of which consumes resources and needs adequate disk space. Depending on the size of your data, that may be a lot of disk space.

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Exporting Data

Elasticsearch data is stored in on-disk indexes. The recommended way to export it is via the Snapshot and Restore API over an SSH tunnel.
  1. Open an SSH tunnel to your Elasticsearch service:
Terminal
upsun tunnel:single --relationship <RELATIONSHIP_NAME>
  1. Register a snapshot repository (a local filesystem path accessible inside the service):
Terminal
curl -X PUT "http://127.0.0.1:9200/_snapshot/my_backup" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
    "type": "fs",
    "settings": {
      "location": "/tmp/es-snapshots"
    }
  }'
  1. Trigger a snapshot:
Terminal
curl -X PUT "http://127.0.0.1:9200/_snapshot/my_backup/snapshot_1?wait_for_completion=true"
  1. Retrieve the snapshot files from the service container using the CLI:
Terminal
upsun ssh -- tar -czf /tmp/es-snapshot.tar.gz /tmp/es-snapshots
upsun scp remote:/tmp/es-snapshot.tar.gz ./es-snapshot.tar.gz
Alternatively, you can re-index all your data from the primary data source (for example your application database) instead of using snapshots. If authentication is enabled on your Elasticsearch service, add the -u user:password flag to the curl commands.
Last modified on March 11, 2026