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Elastic Search Setup in Production

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Gnaniyar Zubair, modified 4 Years ago.

Elastic Search Setup in Production

Liferay Master Posts: 722 Join Date: 12/19/07 Recent Posts
As we know that Elastic search is embedded with Liferay  and if it is running on the same JVM and same server , it will take more resources in production.   But If we do not require any search capabilities ,  index , full-text search or analytics in portal,  is it mandatory for Elastic Search setup in Production in standalone server or  cluster?  We are planning to go with the default search engine in Liferay in production also  as our scope of the project is small and no user index , no assets ( content / document) and not having many pages. Also we don't interact much with Liferay DB .

Please advise.
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Jorge Díaz, modified 4 Years ago.

RE: Elastic Search Setup in Production

Liferay Master Posts: 753 Join Date: 1/9/14 Recent Posts
Hi Gnaniyar Zubair,
About Search usage in Liferay:
Even if you don't use search funcionality, Liferay itself relies in Elasticsearch index instead of Database in order to do a faster search in some situations.
For example: User and Organizations or Asset Publisher won't work in case index is not working well.
So you should double check that your Liferay works in case you disable Elasticsearch service before considering that you don't need Elasticsearch functionality.
For example, you can enter in gogo shell and stop all Elasticsearch modules and after that, try using your application.
About Embedded Elasticsearch:
My advice is to not use embedded Elasticsearch, it is not supported even by Elastic see: https://www.elastic.co/blog/elasticsearch-the-server#_embedded_elasticsearch_not_supported
If you don't want to have an additional machine with the Elasticsearch node, my advice is to at least, install it inside Liferay server, but outside Liferay in a separate folder, so it will run in a different process and you will avoid lots of problems.
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Gnaniyar Zubair, modified 4 Years ago.

RE: Elastic Search Setup in Production

Liferay Master Posts: 722 Join Date: 12/19/07 Recent Posts
Thanks jorge for the quick response.

//User and Organizations or Asset Publisher won't work in case index is not working well.//
But We dont have any indexing for the user / organization / Asset publisher/ content/document....etc. 

//, you can enter in gogo shell and stop all Elasticsearch modules and after that, try using your application.//
Yes good idea , i can try deactivating Elasticsearch module but i am afraid it may affect any  core functionality .

//install it inside Liferay server,.//

it is not  only problem with additional machine, we need to have separate licenses for Elastic and server cost and maintenance. 
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David H Nebinger, modified 4 Years ago.

RE: Elastic Search Setup in Production

Liferay Legend Posts: 14916 Join Date: 9/2/06 Recent Posts
You can use the community edition of Elastic so there is no cost there.  A 3 node cluster for elastic is doable on the cheap.

The right production configuration is the right production configuration. If you choose your own route and go with a wrong production configuration, well that will only come back on you. It's not like you weren't told not to go the route you want to take...