Setting up a node

ElasticSearch allows you to customize several parameters in an installation. In this recipe, we'll see the most-used ones in order to define where to store data and improve performance in general.

Getting ready

You need a working ElasticSearch installation.

How to do it...

Perform the following steps to set up a simple node:

1. Open the config/elasticsearch.yml file with an editor of your choice.

2. Set up the directories that store your server data:

   • For Linux or Mac OS X:

     path.conf: /opt/data/es/conf
     path.data: /opt/data/es/data1,/opt2/data/data2
     path.work: /opt/data/work
     path.logs: /opt/data/logs
     path.plugins: /opt/data/plugins

   • For Windows:

     path.conf: c:\Elasticsearch\conf
     path.data: c:\Elasticsearch\data
     path.work: c:\Elasticsearch\work
     path.logs: c:\Elasticsearch\logs
     path.plugins: c:\Elasticsearch\plugins

3. Set up parameters to control the standard index creation. These parameters are:

   index.number_of_shards: 5
   index.number_of_replicas: 1

How it works...

The path.conf parameter defines...