Elastic Cloud Enterprise

What Elastic Cloud Enterprise is

Elastic Cloud Enterprise (ECE) is a self-managed solution for deploying and operating Elasticsearch clusters at scale. It automates provisioning, scaling and upgrades, with management through a web interface or API. ECE can run on public or private clouds, virtual machines or on-premises infrastructure; listed public cloud providers are Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure. It supports high availability through multiple Availability Zones, data replication and automated restore and snapshots. Deployments can include Elasticsearch and Kibana, with optional APM and Fleet services. On version 8.0 and later, users can add a combined APM Server and Fleet Server. Access controls include platform roles and external authentication providers such as Active Directory, LDAP and SAML. Network traffic is encrypted by default, but encryption at rest requires configuration on hosts and snapshot targets. ECE does not support isolating a specific cluster on entirely dedicated hardware. Elastic describes it for internal hosting of sensitive data, reuse of on-premises infrastructure and centralized management across teams or geographies. Licensing is based on node count and used RAM; pricing is on request.

Who it suits

ECE is aimed at teams that want to manage Elasticsearch deployments on cloud or on-premises infrastructure. It may suit organisations centralizing deployments across teams or geographies, or hosting sensitive data on an internal network.

Limits

Pricing is on request, and licensing is based on the number of nodes and used RAM. Encryption at rest is not provided out of the box and requires configuration on hosts and snapshot targets.

Getting started

1. Review the Elastic Cloud Enterprise deployment documentation.
2. Choose a deployment location: public or private cloud, virtual machines, or on-premises.
3. For public cloud, select from Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, or Microsoft Azure.
4. Prepare a supported installation operating system.
5. Request pricing; licensing is based on node count and used RAM.

Verdict

ECE provides centralized management and high-availability features for self-managed Elasticsearch clusters across several deployment environments. Review the configuration needed for encryption at rest and the dedicated-hardware limitation before choosing it.