🚀 Try Elasticsearch and Kibana locally

Run Elasticsearch and Kibana on your local machine using a simple shell script. This setup uses Docker behind the scenes to install and run the services.

Important

This script is for local testing only. Do not use it in production! For production installations refer to the official documentation for Elasticsearch and Kibana.

🌟 Features

This script comes with a one-month trial of the Elastic Platinum license. After the trial period, the license reverts to Free and open - Basic.

• Platinum: Includes features like the ELSER semantic retrieval model, the Elastic Inference API and much more.
• Free and open - Basic: Includes features like vector search, ES|QL and much more.

For a complete list of subscriptions and features, see our subscriptions page.

💻 System requirements

• Docker
• Works on Linux and macOS
• On Microsoft Windows it works using Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)

🏃‍♀️‍➡️ Getting started

Setup

Run the start-local script using curl:

curl -fsSL https://elastic.co/start-local | sh

This script creates an elastic-start-local folder containing:

• docker-compose.yml: Docker Compose configuration for Elasticsearch and Kibana
• .env: Environment settings, including the Elasticsearch password
• uninstall.sh: The script to uninstall Elasticsearch and Kibana

🌐 Endpoints

After running the script:

• Elasticsearch will be running at http://localhost:9200
• Kibana will be running at http://localhost:5601

The script generates a random password for the elastic user, displayed at the end of the installation and stored in the .env file.

Caution

HTTPS is disabled, and Basic authentication is used for Elasticsearch. This configuration is for local testing only. For security, Elasticsearch and Kibana are accessible only via localhost.

🔑 API key

An API key for Elasticsearch is generated and stored in the .env file as ES_LOCAL_API_KEY. Use this key to connect to Elasticsearch with the Elastic SDK or REST API.

Check the connection to Elasticsearch using curl in the elastic-start-local folder:

source .env
curl $ES_LOCAL_URL -H "Authorization: ApiKey ${ES_LOCAL_API_KEY}"

🐳 Managing Docker services

Go to the elastic-start-local folder to manage services using Docker Compose.

Common commands

• Restart services: docker compose up --wait
• Stop services: docker compose stop

Note

For older versions of Docker Compose:

• Start services: docker-compose up -d

🗑️ Uninstallation

To remove the start-local installation:

cd elastic-start-local
./uninstall.sh

Warning

This erases all data permanently.

📝 Logging

If the installation fails, an error log is created in error-start-local.log. This file contains logs from Elasticsearch and Kibana, captured using the docker logs command.

⚙️ Customizing settings

To change settings (e.g., Elasticsearch password), edit the .env file. Example contents:

ES_LOCAL_VERSION=8.15.2
ES_LOCAL_URL=http://localhost:9200
ES_LOCAL_CONTAINER_NAME=es-local-dev
ES_LOCAL_DOCKER_NETWORK=elastic-net
ES_LOCAL_PASSWORD=hOalVFrN
ES_LOCAL_PORT=9200
KIBANA_LOCAL_CONTAINER_NAME=kibana-local-dev
KIBANA_LOCAL_PORT=5601
KIBANA_LOCAL_PASSWORD=YJFbhLJL
ES_LOCAL_API_KEY=df34grtk...==

Important

After changing the .env file, restart the services:

docker compose restart

Or for older versions:

docker-compose restart

🧪 Testing the installer

We use bashunit to test the script. Tests are in the /tests folder.

Running tests

1. Install bashunit:

   curl -s https://bashunit.typeddevs.com/install.sh | bash

2. Run tests:

   lib/bashunit

The tests run start-local.sh and check if Elasticsearch and Kibana are working.

Note

For URL pipeline testing, a local web server is used. This requires PHP.