The document discusses the transition from managing standalone Elasticsearch clusters to implementing Elastic Cloud Enterprise (ECE) at Office Depot. It highlights the benefits of ECE, such as simplified provisioning and automated management, as well as considerations for preparation and planning before ECE deployment. Additionally, it outlines future directions post-implementation, including the integration of LDAP and leveraging the ECE API.

1. 1
Taking Care of Business at Office
Depot with Elastic Cloud Enterprise
Kyle Curtis
Jan 22, 2019

2. 2
Agenda
Managing stand-alone Elasticsearch clusters before ECE1
ECE Implemented! – Benefits and wins3
Architectural Overview4
Closing Remarks5
Preparation and Planning for ECE2

3. 3
Managing stand-alone Elasticsearch clusters
before ECE
• Python and Boto
‒ Pros:
‒ Built in a github project, portable.
‒ Handled ec2 provision and ElasticSearch install (2.4)
‒ EBS volumes used for fault tolerance on data nodes.
‒ Clusters built primarily on m4.large / m4.2xlarge instance types.
‒ ElasticSearch 2.4 was extremely reliable!
‒ Cons:
‒ Hard to operationalize
‒ Manual certificate handling
‒ No clear path for upgrades and patching
‒ No clear monitoring strategy
‒ No centralized method for ES logs
Provisioning strategies – Elasticsearch on EC2 (ES 2.4)
Source: Gray Arial10pt

4. 4
Managing stand-alone Elasticsearch clusters
before ECE
• Ansible Playbooks
‒ Pros:
‒ Built in a GitHub project, portable.
‒ Playbooks more ‘readable’ than Python.
‒ Ansible handled ec2 provision and docker pre-req’s.
‒ ES was containerized.
‒ EBS volumes used for fault tolerance on data nodes. (~2,000 iops)
‒ Clusters built primarily on m4.large / m4.2xlarge instance types.
‒ Cons:
‒ Hard to operationalize.
‒ Large variable set to manipulate
‒ Needed to port to Ansible Tower
‒ No clear path for upgrades and patching
‒ No centralized method for ES logs
Provisioning strategies – Elasticsearch on EC2. (ES 5.6)
Source: Gray Arial10pt

5. 5
EC2 instances
Spread out across
multiple VPC’s
Standalone Elasticsearch Clusters – before ECE
Clusters
Dev, Preprod and
Production
Versions
Elasticsearch 2.4
and 5.6
100 14 2

6. 6
LETS FOCUS ON USING
ELASTICSEARCH, NOT
ENGINEERING EVERYTHING
AROUND IT

7. 7
Agenda
Managing stand-alone Elasticsearch clusters before ECE
ECE Implemented! – Benefits and wins3
Architectural Overview4
Closing Remarks5
Preparation and Planning for ECE2
1

8. 8
Preparation and Planning for ECE
• Elastic Cloud Enterprise Selection Concerns:
‒Performance
‒New Hardware (EC2 Instance type selection and config)
‒Load Balancing
‒Certificate handling
‒ECE Version 1
‒Cost (Licensing and Compute)
‒Support
Questions and Concerns before we started
Source: Gray Arial10pt

9. 9
Preparation and Planning for ECE
https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/cloud-enterprise/current/ece-topology-example1.html
Source: Gray Arial10pt

10. 10
AWS - special considerations
EC2 Instance type selected for ECE
Source: Gray Arial10pt
We chose:
‒ i3.4xlarge
‒ 16 vCPU’s
‒ 122 Gb RAM
‒ 2 x 1.9Tb NVMe SSD (massive IOPS!)
‒ AWS EC2 reference: https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/i3
Pay Close Attention to:
• OS - Insure your selected OS works properly with the “ENA” AWS network
adapter type – we used centos7.
• New Storage Types - NVMe is ephemeral, so reboot but never power off!

11. 11
AWS – ELB Specifics
Source: Gray Arial10pt
Creating an Application Load Balancer
in AWS you need:
‒ ELB type “Application”
‒ Port: 9243
‒ Protocol: HTTPS
‒ Health Check: /__elb_health__
‒ Only bind in your ECE nodes with the proxy
role enabled.
‒ Bind a certificate to your elb, all clients
must trust AWS Signers.

12. 12
AWS – tie dns subdomain to your ELB (Route 53)
Using AWS DNS to route calls to your elb
Source: Gray Arial10pt
• Create a dedicated dns subdomain, ip.es.mydomain.com
• Create a DNS host “A” record inside that subdomain, that points to your
ELB…
‒Example Host A record: *.ip.es.mydomain.com
‒Alias Target: %your-elb-id%. us-east-1.elb.amazonaws.com

13. 13
ECE – Elasticsearch and Kibana Endpoints
Send the Elasticsearch and Kibana endpoints to your customer…
Source: Gray Arial10pt
Endpoint URL Example: https://
96d0a27d2g314189ac4d2b88af1e2ae5.ip.es.mydomain.com:9243

14. 14
Agenda
Managing stand-alone Elasticsearch clusters before ECE
ECE Implemented! – Benefits and wins
Architectural Overview4
Closing Remarks5
Preparation and Planning for ECE
1
3
2

15. 15
EC2 instances
(6 Prod, 3 Pre-
Prod)
Post Consolidation – ECE Implemented!
Clusters
Dev, Preprod and
Production
(now varies)
Versions
Elasticsearch 5.6,
6.4 and 6.5
(ES 2.4 retired.)
9 12 2

16. 16
ECE Implemented – Benefits and wins!
• Point / Click Provisioning – build a cluster in minutes not hours.
• Point / Click Scaling – make changes to ElasticSearch and Kibana sizes
without updating complex scripts.
• Point / Click addition of new ES Versions and matching Kibana versions.
• Automated Snapshots (you provide an s3 bucket)
Source: Gray Arial10pt

17. 17
ECE Implemented – Benefits and wins!
• Multi cloud zone support built-in.
• Automatic Certificate handling (certificate generation between ES nodes is
automatically handled.)
• Central log management - Elasticsearch logs – all automatically handled
inside ECE with Beats.
• Trusted Certificate for all clusters – no more providing a certificate or signer
CA to Clients. (trusted certificate on the elb)
• All ES clusters now TLSv1.2 Compliant!
Source: Gray Arial10pt

18. 18
ECE Post Implementation – Future Directions
• Operationalize ECE
• LDAPS - Leverage LDAPS authentication and on-board business
intelligence users to work with data in Kibana.
• ECE API! - Automate more…Leverage the ECE API to integrate with
Automation and other Platforms.
• Get Operations in-sync with elastic fix releases for more timely patch cycles
• Upgrade to ECE 2.0!
Source: Gray Arial10pt

19. 19
Agenda
Managing stand-alone ElasticSearch clusters before ECE
ECE Implemented! – Benefits and wins
Architectural Overview
Closing Remarks5
Preparation and Planning for ECE
1
2
4
3

20. 20

21. 21
Agenda
Managing stand-alone ElasticSearch clusters before ECE
ECE Implemented! – Benefits and wins
Architectural Overview
Closing Remarks5
Preparation and Planning for ECE
1
2
3
4

22. 22
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YOUR BUSINESS NEEDS