Product release

Elastic Stack Release - 5.0.0-alpha4

By
Shay Banon

Game of Thrones season 6 is wrapped, the Pound has lost a few ounces, and Messi is talking about retirement. It’s been quite a week. But we have something to cheer you up. Say hello to Elastic Stack 5.0 alpha 4. 

Now, before you get too excited, keep in mind that this is still an Alpha release.  So, please don’t put it into production.

Before we jump in, a huge thank you to everyone that tried the previous alpha releases and provided feedback. Keep the feedback rolling. Create a bug report and you too can become an Elastic Pioneer. And now, without further ado, some highlights from Alpha 4.

Elasticsearch

For more detailed information, and quite a few other features, peruse the Elasticsearch detail post.

  • The wait is over. Introducing the first version of a low-level Java HTTP/REST client. It provides a simple HTTP client with minimal dependencies, which handles sniffing, logging, round robinning of requests, and retry on node failure.
  • New Rollover API and Shrink API makes managing indices for time-based event data much easier
  • When a user adds a comment to a blog post, how do you let them immediately see their comment at the top of the list? The new  ?refresh=wait_for option is an easy solution to this problem.

As a reminder, we've also released the Migration Helper to help prepare you for migration from 2.3.x to 5.0. Install the Elasticsearch migration helper to make the transition to 5.0 more enjoyable.

Kibana

Head out to the Kibana detail post for details on the awesomeness. But, here's the quick rundown. 

  • Import data from CSV files. Yes, you read that right. You can now import CSV data into your Elasticsearch cluster directly from Kibana. We are super psyched about this one too!
  • X-Pack now lets you also monitor the health of your Kibana cluster. Keep track of requests, response times, memory usage, and more.
  • Have you ever been in a situation where you wanted to temporarily disable parts of a visualization or tweak the order of sub-buckets. Now, you can with ease and fewer clicks.
  • Goodbye Settings. Hello Management. The new Management app is your window into Elastic Stack settings and configurations.

Logstash

For more detailed information on the latest and greatest, head over to the Logstash detail post.

  • More metrics, more visibility. With new plugin-level metrics added in the system monitoring API, debugging your Logstash configuration gets a lot easier!
  • Bunch of optimizations to the Elasticsearch output to make it more efficient and awesome
  • Updated Logstash input and output that works with the released recently Apache Kafka version 0.10

Beats

You can find more beaty details about these changes in the dedicated blog post.

ES-Hadoop

And last, but certainly not the least. ES-Hadoop version 5.0.0-alpha4 has also been released today.