The Elasticsearch transport module is deprecated and depends on functionality that might get removed at some point. We strongly recommend that you use the Java transport client instead, with the X-Pack or Shield security features for your version of Elasticsearch. To learn more, see Configure the Java Transport Client.
In order to connect to an Elasticsearch cluster running on Elastic Cloud with the transport protocol, a plugin is required for the client. The plugin extends the transport protocol with three crucial features:
- Authentication
- SSL encryption
- Cluster handshake
The two first are an obvious necessity when sending your traffic over the internet and the last one is to let our proxies know which cluster your client is trying to connect to.
The transport module is backwards-compatible with the default transport module. This means that it can safely be added as a transport.type, and it will only enable its authentication and SSL support when connecting to a an Elasticsearch cluster hosted by Elastic Cloud. This equals less differences in settings between local development, staging, and production.
The plugin is open source and published on GitHub.