The Amazon OpenSearch Service (formerly Amazon Elasticsearch Service) is not Elasticsearch and is not a partnership with Elastic, the company behind Elasticsearch. Amazon’s OpenSearch Service is based on an older, forked version of Elasticsearch and offers a fraction of the functionality, choice, and support available directly from Elastic.
Choose the Elasticsearch service, the official offering from Elastic. It delivers Elasticsearch, Kibana, and the complete Elastic experience, within AWS. Rest easy knowing that Elastic’s search expertise is backing your deployments with security updates, solutions, and support.
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What to consider?
Elasticsearch
Amazon OpenSearch
Cloud Provider Flexibility
True Multi-cloud Flexibility
Cloud agnostic and flexible deployment options across AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, with commercially supported self-managed and service options.
Built-in Machine Learning / Artificial Intelligence
Native ML Integration
Out-of-the-box integrations and pre-configured solutions that use ML and specific models allow customers to start ingesting data to quickly gain initial insights.
Elastic ML supports the import of any PyTorch model from Hugging Face, supporting a broad range of custom or advanced ML use cases.
Separate plugin
AWS OpenSearch supports ingestion of machine learning models only for text embedding use cases. Limited functionality when used with solution plug-ins.
Cross cluster search (CCS) and Cross cluster replication (CCR)
Search Globally Distributed Clusters
CCS and CCR on Elasticsearch allow searching across globally distributed clusters, whether self-managed, hybrid or across cloud service providers, enabling low-latency search for all use cases.
Limited; AWS OpenSearch CCS and CCR only supports clusters hosted by AWS OpenSearch, and does not support hybrid or multi-cloud. No support for custom dictionaries or SQL; No support for M3 or burstable (T2 and T3) instances.
Vector Search
Native integration
Optimized for scale, performance and hybrid search; Simplified semantic search with a single endpoint while collapsing multiple steps in a single API call; Making vector search capabilities available to any developer without becoming an AI expert or relying on data science teams.
Separate plugin
Multi-step process requiring advanced memory management, specifying algorithms and configuring index settings for basic operation.
Application Performance Monitoring and full stack observability
Integrated APM
Elastic APM is available as a ready-to-use feature within the Elasticsearch Platform, allowing customers to easily analyze logs, metrics and traces in a unified manner, and enabling customers to view the performance of an application in its entirety.
OpenSearch cannot deliver a full single pane of glass view for observability.
Customers are required to use a separate tool, like AWS X-Ray or other third-party tools, to analyze traces, necessitating extra time and effort to configure additional tools to gain these insights. This disrupts troubleshooting workflows
Elastic SIEM for Security
Native Security
Elastic SIEM is available as a ready-to-use feature with the Elasticsearch Platform, allowing customers to have a unified approach to security.
Customers can use Elastic SIEM OOTB for cloud security posture management needs. Elastic SIEM allows customers to interactively monitor data, establish a holistic view of activity and prioritize potential threats.
OpenSearch does not come with built-in SIEM capability, so customers need to use additional services or engage a separate third party for their security needs.
Search Specific Capabilities
Faster Time to Startup
The Elasticsearch Platform comes with pre-built tooling and UIs to accelerate search implementation.
It includes a ready-to-use web crawler for easy data ingestion, and a workplace search UI to easily implement an internal search solution.
AWS OpenSearch does not include pre-built tools for search, like a web crawler or an internal search solution. Customers must purchase a separate service to use and benefit from these tools.
What to consider?
Cloud Provider Flexibility
Built-in Machine Learning / Artificial Intelligence
Cross cluster search (CCS) and Cross cluster replication (CCR)
Vector Search
Application Performance Monitoring and full stack observability
Elastic SIEM for Security
Search Specific Capabilities
Elasticsearch
Amazon OpenSearch
True Multi-cloud Flexibility
Cloud agnostic and flexible deployment options across AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, with commercially supported self-managed and service options.
Native ML Integration
Out-of-the-box integrations and pre-configured solutions that use ML and specific models allow customers to start ingesting data to quickly gain initial insights.
Elastic ML supports the import of any PyTorch model from Hugging Face, supporting a broad range of custom or advanced ML use cases.
Separate plugin
AWS OpenSearch supports ingestion of machine learning models only for text embedding use cases. Limited functionality when used with solution plug-ins.
Search Globally Distributed Clusters
CCS and CCR on Elasticsearch allow searching across globally distributed clusters, whether self-managed, hybrid or across cloud service providers, enabling low-latency search for all use cases.
Limited; AWS OpenSearch CCS and CCR only supports clusters hosted by AWS OpenSearch, and does not support hybrid or multi-cloud. No support for custom dictionaries or SQL; No support for M3 or burstable (T2 and T3) instances.
Native integration
Optimized for scale, performance and hybrid search; Simplified semantic search with a single endpoint while collapsing multiple steps in a single API call; Making vector search capabilities available to any developer without becoming an AI expert or relying on data science teams.
Separate plugin
Multi-step process requiring advanced memory management, specifying algorithms and configuring index settings for basic operation.
Integrated APM
Elastic APM is available as a ready-to-use feature within the Elasticsearch Platform, allowing customers to easily analyze logs, metrics and traces in a unified manner, and enabling customers to view the performance of an application in its entirety.
OpenSearch cannot deliver a full single pane of glass view for observability.
Customers are required to use a separate tool, like AWS X-Ray or other third-party tools, to analyze traces, necessitating extra time and effort to configure additional tools to gain these insights. This disrupts troubleshooting workflows
Native Security
Elastic SIEM is available as a ready-to-use feature with the Elasticsearch Platform, allowing customers to have a unified approach to security.
Customers can use Elastic SIEM OOTB for cloud security posture management needs. Elastic SIEM allows customers to interactively monitor data, establish a holistic view of activity and prioritize potential threats.
OpenSearch does not come with built-in SIEM capability, so customers need to use additional services or engage a separate third party for their security needs.
Faster Time to Startup
The Elasticsearch Platform comes with pre-built tooling and UIs to accelerate search implementation.
It includes a ready-to-use web crawler for easy data ingestion, and a workplace search UI to easily implement an internal search solution.
AWS OpenSearch does not include pre-built tools for search, like a web crawler or an internal search solution. Customers must purchase a separate service to use and benefit from these tools.
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