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Self-managed cluster

Self Managed

If you want to install Elastic on your own premises without the assistance of an orchestrator, then you can deploy a self-managed cluster. If you deploy a self-managed cluster, then you have complete control and responsibility over every aspect of your Elastic deployment.

To quickly set up Elasticsearch and Kibana in Docker for local development or testing, jump to Local development installation (quickstart).

Simplify the deployment process

Self-managed clusters are useful for local development, and for exploring Elastic features. However, Elastic offers several deployment options that can simplify the process of deploying and managing multi-node deployments, especially in production. They also allow you to deploy and manage multiple deployments from a single surface.

Managed by Elastic:

Self-hosted options:

For a comparison of these deployment options, refer to Choosing your deployment type and Detailed deployment comparison.

This section focuses on deploying Elasticsearch and Kibana without an orchestrator.

Depending on your use case, you might need to deploy other components, such as APM, Fleet, or Logstash. Deploying those components is not covered in this section. Learn more about optional components.

This section covers the following tasks:

Learn how to install and configure Elasticsearch. Elasticsearch is the distributed search and analytics engine, scalable data store, and vector database at the heart of all Elastic solutions.

After you deploy Elasticsearch, you can install Kibana. Kibana provides the user interface for all Elastic solutions. It’s a powerful tool for visualizing and analyzing your data, and for managing and monitoring the Elastic Stack. Although Kibana is not required to use Elasticsearch, it's required for most use cases.

  • Install Kibana: Install Kibana using one of our install packages or container images, and enroll Kibana with your Elasticsearch cluster.
  • Configure Kibana: Learn how to make configuration changes to Kibana.
  • Access Kibana: Learn how to access Kibana using a web browser.

Some components of the Elastic Stack require additional configuration and local dependencies in order to deploy in environments without internet access.

Refer to Air gapped install to learn how to install Elasticsearch, Kibana, and optional components in an environment without internet access.

Review a list of all of the resources that you can use to interact with your self-managed cluster, including tools, APIs, client libraries, and more.

Tools and APIs for self-managed clusters.

Review these other sections for critical information about securing and managing your self-managed cluster.

Learn how to secure your Elastic environment to restrict access to only authorized parties, and allow communication between your environment and external parties.

  • Security: Learn about security features that prevent bad actors from tampering with your data, and encrypt communications to, from, and within your cluster.
  • Users and roles: Set up authentication and authorization for your cluster, and learn about the underlying security technologies that Elasticsearch uses to authenticate and authorize requests internally and across services.
  • Spaces: Learn how to organize content in Kibana, and restrict access to this content to specific users.
  • API keys: Authenticate and authorize programmatic access to your deployments and Elasticsearch resources.
  • Connectors: Manage connection information between Elastic and third-party systems.
  • Remote clusters with self-managed installations: Enable communication between Elasticsearch clusters to support cross-cluster replication and cross-cluster search.

Monitor the performance of your Elastic environment, administer your license, set up backup and resilience tools, and maintain the health of your environment.

You can upgrade your Elastic environment to gain access to the latest features.

Learn how to design a production-ready Elastic environment.

  • Production guidance: Review tips and guidance that you can use to design a production environment that matches your workloads, policies, and deployment needs.
  • Reference architectures: Explore blueprints for deploying clusters tailored to different use cases.

In the Distributed architecture section, learn about the architecture of Elasticsearch and Kibana, and how Elastic stores and retrieves data and executes tasks in clusters with multiple nodes.