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Course Outline

Day 1: Foundations, Architecture, and In-Depth Differences (ELK vs. OpenSearch)

Morning Session: Core Concepts & Architecture Review

  • Introduction & History:
      - Grasping the origins of the ELK Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana)
      - The 2021 fork: Why OpenSearch emerged (AWS vs. Elastic licensing changes, Apache 2.0 vs. SSPL/Elastic License)
  • Under the Hood (The Shared DNA):
      - Apache Lucene core engine: Shards, segments, inverted indices, and document storage
      - Distributed cluster architecture: Nodes (Master, Data, Coordinator), clusters, and cluster state management
      - Data Ingestion and Processing Fundamentals:
      - Logstash pipelines, Beats, and modern alternatives (Fluentbit, OpenTelemetry/Data Prepper)

Afternoon Session: Feature Divergence & Ecosystem Differences

  • Security & Enterprise Features Comparison:
      - Elasticsearch: Limitations of the free tier security vs. Paid features (SSO, advanced alerting, machine learning, cross-cluster replication tiers)
      - OpenSearch: Out-of-the-box free fine-grained access control, internal user database, SAML/LDAP integration, and security plugins
  • UI & Query Languages:
      - Kibana vs. OpenSearch Dashboards: Interface layouts, management tools, and developer experience
      - Query Languages: Elasticsearch's ES|QL vs. OpenSearch's PPL (Piped Processing Language) and SQL support
  • Advanced Workloads (Vector Search & AI):
      - HNSW implementations, k-NN search performance, and machine learning integration approaches.

Day 2: Installation, Migration Strategies, Operations, and Troubleshooting

Morning Session: Installation & Cluster Setup

  • Deploying OpenSearch:
      - System requirements, kernel parameters (vm.max_map_count), and JVM heap tuning
      - Bare-metal/VM installation via tarball and package managers
      - Containerized deployment using Docker and Docker Compose
      - Multi-node cluster bootstrap and security plugin initialization (opensearch-security-install)
  • OpenSearch Dashboards Configuration:
      - Connecting Dashboards to the OpenSearch cluster
      - Configuring SSL/TLS certificates and authentication backends

Afternoon Session: Migration Path, Operations & Best Practices

  • Migration Strategies (ELK to OpenSearch):
      - Assessing current ES version compatibility (recommended paths from pre-7.10/7.11 vs. newer versions)
      - Snapshot & Restore Method: Using shared repository storage (AWS S3, NFS) for seamless data transfer
      - Reindex-from-Remote & Logstash Rolling Migrations: Handling live data cutovers with minimal downtime
      - API and client SDK adjustments (updating endpoints, connection strings, and client libraries)
  • Lifecycle Management & Operational Differences:
      - Elasticsearch ILM (Index Lifecycle Management) vs. OpenSearch ISM (Index State Management) syntax and policies
      - Rollover, shrinking, downsampling, and index retention strategies
  • Monitoring, Backup, and Troubleshooting:
      - Cluster health APIs, cluster stats, and tracking shard allocation issues
      - Common failure scenarios (circuit breaker exceptions, JVM garbage collection pauses, split-brain mitigation)

Q&A and Wrap-up: Open forum for specific company migration roadblocks and architecture reviews

Practical exercises and Hand-On Labs will be a key focus of the course. Participants will gain experience with OpenSearch deployment, configuration, data ingestion, security, migration, monitoring, and troubleshooting through realistic, real-world scenarios.

Requirements

Participants should possess:

  • Foundational knowledge of Linux command-line operations.
  • Familiarity with networking concepts (TCP/IP, HTTP/HTTPS, DNS).
  • A basic understanding of log management and monitoring principles.
  • General awareness of containers (Docker) is advantageous but not mandatory.
  • Basic experience with Elasticsearch or the ELK Stack.
 14 Hours

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