🚀 Try Elasticsearch and Kibana locally

Run Elasticsearch and Kibana on your local machine using a simple shell script. This setup uses Docker behind the scenes to install and run the services.

[!IMPORTANT]
This script is for local testing only. Do not use it in production! For production installations refer to the official documentation for Elasticsearch and Kibana.

🌟 Features

This script comes with a one-month trial license. After the trial period, the license reverts to Free and open - Basic.

• Trial: Includes All features like the Playground, ELSER, semantic retrieval model, the Elastic Inference API and much more.
• Free and open - Basic: Includes features like vector search, ES|QL and much more.

For a complete list of subscriptions and features, see our subscriptions page.

💻 System requirements

• Docker
• Works on Linux and macOS
• On Microsoft Windows it works using Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)

🏃‍♀️‍➡️ Getting started

Setup

Run the start-local script using curl:

curl -fsSL https://elastic.co/start-local | sh

This script creates an elastic-start-local folder containing:

• docker-compose.yml: Docker Compose configuration for Elasticsearch and Kibana
• .env: Environment settings, including the Elasticsearch password
• start.sh and stop.sh: Scripts to start and stop Elasticsearch and Kibana
• uninstall.sh: The script to uninstall Elasticsearch and Kibana

🌐 Endpoints

After running the script:

• Elasticsearch will be running at http://localhost:9200
• Kibana will be running at http://localhost:5601

The script generates a random password for the elastic user, displayed at the end of the installation and stored in the .env file.

[!CAUTION] HTTPS is disabled, and Basic authentication is used for Elasticsearch. This configuration is for local testing only. For security, Elasticsearch and Kibana are accessible only via localhost.

🔑 API key

An API key for Elasticsearch is generated and stored in the .env file as ES_LOCAL_API_KEY. Use this key to connect to Elasticsearch with the Elastic SDK or REST API.

Check the connection to Elasticsearch using curl in the elastic-start-local folder:

source .env
curl $ES_LOCAL_URL -H "Authorization: ApiKey ${ES_LOCAL_API_KEY}"

🐳 Start and stop the services

You can use the start and stop commands available in the elastic-start-local folder.

To stop the Elasticsearch and Kibana Docker services, use the stop command:

cd elastic-start-local
./stop.sh

To start the Elasticsearch and Kibana Docker services, use the start command:

cd elastic-start-local
./start.sh

Docker Compose.

🗑️ Uninstallation

To remove the start-local installation:

cd elastic-start-local
./uninstall.sh

[!WARNING]
This erases all data permanently.

📝 Logging

If the installation fails, an error log is created in error-start-local.log. This file contains logs from Elasticsearch and Kibana, captured using the docker logs command.

⚙️ Customizing settings

To change settings (e.g., Elasticsearch password), edit the .env file. Example contents:

ES_LOCAL_VERSION=8.15.2
ES_LOCAL_URL=http://localhost:9200
ES_LOCAL_CONTAINER_NAME=es-local-dev
ES_LOCAL_DOCKER_NETWORK=elastic-net
ES_LOCAL_PASSWORD=hOalVFrN
ES_LOCAL_PORT=9200
KIBANA_LOCAL_CONTAINER_NAME=kibana-local-dev
KIBANA_LOCAL_PORT=5601
KIBANA_LOCAL_PASSWORD=YJFbhLJL
ES_LOCAL_API_KEY=df34grtk...==

[!IMPORTANT] After changing the .env file, restart the services using stop and start:

cd elastic-start-local
./stop.sh
./start.sh

🧪 Testing the installer

We use bashunit to test the script. Tests are in the /tests folder.

Running tests

1. Install bashunit:

   curl -s https://bashunit.typeddevs.com/install.sh | bash

2. Run tests:

   lib/bashunit

The tests run start-local.sh and check if Elasticsearch and Kibana are working.

[!NOTE] For URL pipeline testing, a local web server is used. This requires PHP.