a9s Search

This documentation describes the a9s Search service. a9s Search enables on-demand provisioning of VM-based, dedicated OpenSearch servers and clusters. Developers can create instances of an OpenSearch server or cluster using Apps Manager or the Cloud Foundry Command Line Interface (cf CLI) and bind these instances to an application. Depending on your service plan, a service instance may be associated with a single, dedicated VM or a set of VMs consisting of multiple VMs containing an OpenSearch replica set cluster.

Overview

When you run the cf CLI cf create-service a9s-search command, BOSH creates dedicated VMs for this service instance. This allows the best possible bad neighborhood protection.

OpenSearch service instance provisioning, including VM orchestration, is entirely automated. This enables service instances to be highly isolated and shielded by infrastructure virtualization mechanisms.

Due to the on-demand provisioning on VMs, only existing service instances allocate infrastructure resources. These resources are released when service instances are destroyed. Using on-demand provisioning the number of service instances is not limited by design.

Distributed across multiple infrastructure availability zones, clustered data service plans enable short failover times and are resilient against failures of individual infrastructure hosts or entire availability zones.

Current Features

The current version of a9s Search includes the following key features:

Feature	Benefit
On­-Demand Service Instance Provisioning	a9s Search deploys OpenSearch instances automatically. Developers can provision a single-VM OpenSearch server or a multi-VM OpenSearch Replica Set using a single command.
Service Instance Isolation	Each OpenSearch server runs on a dedicated VM to ensure bad neighborhood protection in order to be aligned with enterprise security requirements. a9s Search uses Cloud Foundry security groups to prevent network connections being established by unauthorized applications.
High Availability	a9s Search ensures high-availability. The Consul-based internal DNS system ensures that the connected application always connects to a working node.
Smoke Tests	a9s Search contains a post-deploy smoke tests errand that runs a series of basic tests against your installation to ensure that it is configured properly.
Service Instance Capacity Upgrade	Cloud Foundry Service Plan updates allow upgrades to the RAM, CPU and storage capacity for your Search instances.
Logging and Monitoring	Each a9s Search service instance provides log messages and OpenSearch-specific metrics to one or more syslog/graphite endpoints. You can configure the syslog/graphite endpoint to receive logging and monitoring information.
Deployment Updater	This errand automatically updates the stemcell and all provisioned a9s Search service instances to their lastest version.
Backup Manager	The Backup Manager does regular backups of your instances and offers endpoints to backup and restore backups instantly.
CF Service Guard	The CF Service Guard creates Cloud Foundry App Security Groups for your service instance VMs. When the IP address of a service instance changes, the CF Service Guard updates the ASG.