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ElasticSearch– Development vs Production Mode

A lot of people are unaware that ElasticSearch can run in 2 modes; Development and Production Mode. So what is the difference between the 2 modes?

Bootstrap Checks

To explain the difference I first have to talk a little bit about bootstrap checks. During the startup of an ElasticSearch node, it will validate certain ElasticSearch, JVM and system settings and checks if they are safe for the operation of ElasticSearch. 

Development vs. production mode

In previous versions of Elasticsearch, a bootstrap check failure was logged as a warning. Unfortunately users didn’t notice these messages. To solve this ElasticSearch introduced the development and production mode. If Elasticsearch is in development mode, any bootstrap checks that fail appear as warnings in the Elasticsearch log. If Elasticsearch is in production mode, any bootstrap checks that fail will cause Elasticsearch to refuse to start.

By default, Elasticsearch assumes that you are working in development mode.

How to switch?

Ok, now that you understand what the difference is between the 2 modes, it’s time for the next question. How can you switch between the two?

This is completely based on the network settings like network.host.  If your node does not bind transport to an external interface (the default), it is in development mode. When the node does bind transport to an external interface, it is in production mode. Simple as that!

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