Installing and configuring your cluster

The first step is to make sure that a Java SE environment is installed properly. ElasticSearch requires Version 6 or later, which can be downloaded from the following location: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html. You can also use OpenJDK if you wish.

To install ElasticSearch, just download it from http://www.elasticsearch.org/download/ and unpack it. Choose the lastest stable version. That's it! The installation is complete.

Note

During the writing of this book we used Version 0.20.0.

The main interface to communicate with ElasticSearch is based on an HTTP protocol and REST. This means that you can even use a web browser for some basic queries and requests; but for anything more sophisticated, you'll need to use additional software, such as the cURL command. If you use the Linux or OS X command, the curl package should already be available. In case you're using Windows, you can download it from http://curl.haxx.se/download.html.