Cloud-based discovery is a mechanism that allows Elasticsearch nodes to discover and communicate with each other in cloud-based environments, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Cloud-based discovery is designed to work with cloud-specific APIs and networking infrastructure to provide dynamic and scalable node discovery and communication.
Cloud-based discovery plugins are available for Elasticsearch to support different cloud providers. For example, Elasticsearch provides the AWS Discovery plugin and the GCP Discovery plugin, which use cloud-specific APIs to discover and communicate with other nodes in the cluster.
The AWS Discovery plugin uses the AWS API to discover nodes in an Elasticsearch cluster running on AWS. It uses the EC2 API to discover instances in the same security group or VPC as the instance running Elasticsearch. The plugin also supports IAM roles and instance profiles to authenticate the requests to the AWS API.
The GCP Discovery plugin uses the GCP API to discover nodes in an Elasticsearch cluster running on GCP. It uses the Compute Engine API to discover instances in the same instance group or network as the instance running Elasticsearch. The plugin also supports IAM roles and service accounts to authenticate the requests to the GCP API.
Cloud-based discovery provides several advantages in cloud-based environments, such as dynamic and scalable node discovery and communication, automatic discovery of new nodes as they are added to the environment, and integration with cloud-specific security and networking features.
To use cloud-based discovery in Elasticsearch, you can install and configure the appropriate cloud-based discovery plugin for your environment. The plugin will use the cloud-specific APIs and infrastructure to discover and communicate with other nodes in the cluster, providing a seamless and efficient way to manage Elasticsearch clusters in the cloud.