Indices and Aliases

• ElasticSearch is not a traditional database, searches can be executed acorss indices with no known performance implications

• Entire cluster search:

  curl 'localhost:9200/_search?q=id:1'

• Multiple indices search:

  curl 'localhost:9200/index1,index2/_search?q=id:1'

• Wildcard search:

  curl 'localhost:9200/index*/_search?q=id:*'

• Index alias - create an alias for index or for group of indexes:

  curl -XPOST 'http://localhost:9200/_aliases' -H 'content-type: application/json' -d '
  {
    "actions" : [
        { "add" : { "index" : "test1", "alias" : "alias1" } },
        { "add" : { "index" : "test2", "alias" : "alias1" } }
    ]
  }'

• Why bother creating aliases? Logical data partitioning, archiving by index, access control...