Migrating your Elasticsearch data

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You might have switched to Elasticsearch Service for any number of reasons and you’re likely wondering how to get your existing Elasticsearch data into your new infrastructure. Along with easily creating as many new deployments with Elasticsearch clusters that you need, you have several options for moving your data over. Choose the option that works best for you:

Index your data from the original source, which is the simplest method and provides the greatest flexibility for the Elasticsearch version and ingestion method.
Reindex from a remote cluster, which rebuilds the index from scratch.
Restore from a snapshot, which copies the existing indices.

One of the many advantages of Elasticsearch Service is that you can spin up a deployment quickly, try out something, and then delete it if you don’t like it. This flexibility provides the freedom to experiment while your existing production cluster continues to work.

If you are planning to switch from Amazon ES to Elasticsearch Service, see our guidelines about how to migrate your AWS ES data.

Before you begin

Depending on which option that you choose, you might have limitations or need do some preparation beforehand.

Indexing from the source: The new cluster must be the same size as your old one, or larger, to accommodate the data.
Reindex from a remote cluster: The new cluster must be the same size as your old one, or larger, to accommodate the data. Depending on your security settings for your old cluster, you might need to temporarily allow TCP traffic on port 9243 for this procedure.
Restore from a snapshot: The new cluster must be the same size as your old one, or larger, to accommodate the data. The new cluster must also be at the same or a newer Elasticsearch version than the old cluster. If you have not already done so, you will need to set up snapshots for your old cluster using a repository that can be accessed from the new cluster.

Before you migrate your Elasticsearch data, define your index mappings on the new cluster. Index mappings are unable to migrate during reindex operations.

Index from the source

If you still have access to the original data source, outside of your old Elasticsearch cluster, you can load the data from there. This might be the simplest option, allowing you to choose the Elasticsearch version and take advantage of the latest features. You have the option to use any ingestion method that you want—Logstash, Beats, the Elasticsearch clients, or whatever works best for you.

If the original source isn’t available or has other issues that make it non-viable, there are still two more migration options, getting the data from a remote cluster or restoring from a snapshot.

Reindex from a remote cluster

Through the Elasticsearch reindex API, available in version 5.x and later, you can connect your new Elasticsearch Service deployment remotely to your old Elasticsearch cluster. This pulls the data from your old cluster and indexes it into your new one. Reindexing essentially rebuilds the index from scratch and it can be more resource intensive to run.

Log in to the Elasticsearch Service Console.
Select a deployment or create one.
If the old Elasticsearch cluster is on a remote host, add an Elasticsearch reindex.remote.whitelist user setting:
1. From your deployment menu, go to the Edit page.
2. At the bottom of each Elasticsearch node, expand the User settings overrides caret.
3. Add the following user setting:
  
  reindex.remote.whitelist: [REMOTE_HOST:PORT]
  
  where REMOTE_HOST and PORT are the endpoint of the Elasticsearch cluster that you are reindexing from, without the https:// prefix. For example:
  
  reindex.remote.whitelist: [81693ca13302469c8cbca193625c941c.us-east-1.aws.found.io:9243]
4. Click Save changes.
From the API Console or in the Kibana Console app, create the destination index on Elasticsearch Service.

Copy the index from the remote cluster:

POST _reindex
{
  "source": {
    "remote": {
      "host": "https://REMOTE_ELASTICSEARCH_ENDPOINT:PORT",
      "username": "USER",
      "password": "PASSWORD"
    },
    "index": "INDEX_NAME",
    "query": {
      "match_all": {}
    }
  },
  "dest": {
    "index": "INDEX_NAME"
  }
}

Verify that the new index is present:
```
GET INDEX-NAME/_search?pretty
```
You can remove the reindex.remote.whitelist user setting that you added previously.

Restore from a snapshot

If you cannot connect to a remote index for whatever reason, such as if it’s in a non-working state, you can try restoring from the most recent working snapshot.

On your old Elasticsearch cluster, choose an option to get the name of your snapshot repository bucket:
```
GET /_snapshot
GET /_snapshot/_all
```

Get the snapshot name:

GET /_snapshot/NEW-REPOSITORY-NAME/_all

The output for each entry provides a "snapshot": value which is the snapshot name.

  {
  "snapshots": [
    {
      "snapshot": "scheduled-1527616008-instance-0000000004",

From the Elasticsearch Service Console of the new Elasticsearch cluster, add the snapshot repository. For details, see our guidelines for Amazon Web Services (AWS) Storage, Google Cloud Storage (GCS), or Azure Blob Storage.
Start the Restore process.

For deployments with Elastic Stack version 7.2 and higher:
1. Open Kibana and go to Management > Snapshot and Restore.
2. Under the Snapshots tab, you can see the available snapshots from your newly added snapshot repository. Click on any snapshot to view its details, and from there you can choose to restore it.
3. Click Restore.
4. Select the indices you wish to restore.
5. Configure any additional index settings.
6. Click Restore snapshot to begin the process.
For deployments with Elastic Stack version 7.1 and lower:
1. Open the API Console or the Kibana Console app of the new Elasticsearch cluster and restore the snapshot:
```
POST /_snapshot/REPOSITORY_NAME/SNAPSHOT_NAME/_restore?pretty
{
"indices": "*",
"ignore_unavailable": true,
"include_global_state": true
}
```
Verify that the new index is restored in your Elasticsearch Service deployment with this query:
```
GET INDEX_NAME/_search?pretty
```

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