Architecture

STACKIT OpenSearch is built on a managed stack providing on-demand provisioning of Virtual Machine (VM) based, dedicated OpenSearch servers and clusters. We offer two variants of this service: a Cloud Foundry (CF) Runtime version that you can order in the CF Marketplace and bind directly to your internal apps, and an Exposed Service version that makes your instance securely accessible over the public internet. Both variants serve as a powerful search and analytics engine for your applications.

Core Components

OpenSearch

OpenSearch serves as the central search and analytics engine, enabling fast searching, aggregation, and querying across large volumes of data.

Custom Configuration: STACKIT OpenSearch relies on a customized deployment configuration managed by the underlying framework. This deviates from a default community OpenSearch configuration. Node-level settings may be tuned specifically for this managed environment.

Supported Plugins

To extend the functionality of your search engine, STACKIT OpenSearch supports specific OpenSearch plugins. The following repository plugins are enabled by default and cannot be disabled:

• repository-s3
• repository-azure

Additionally, you can enable specific bundled plugins on demand, such as analysis-phonetic.

OpenSearch Dashboards

OpenSearch Dashboards provides the visualization interface, allowing you to create dashboards, explore data, and analyze metrics through an intuitive web UI.

Infrastructure architecture

Service instance isolation

Each STACKIT OpenSearch service instance runs on dedicated virtual machines in the STACKIT Compute Engine. This ensures isolation from other services and protects against resource contention (bad neighborhood protection).

Deployment separation

OpenSearch services created through Cloud Foundry and those created using STACKIT Portal/CLI are completely separated. Services created in one environment must be managed and deleted in the same environment - cross-environment management is not supported for technical reasons.

Services must always be managed in the environment they were created in. * Services

created in the STACKIT Portal/CLI must also be managed/deleted in the STACKIT Portal/CLI. In the STACKIT Portal, some (not all) services may be displayed that were created using Cloud Foundry (esp. the Flex databases). * Services created using Cloud Foundry must be managed/deleted using Cloud Foundry. Services displayed in Cloud Foundry as part of an organization prefixed by stackit_portal_prod_ have been created using the STACKIT Portal/CLI and must be managed from there, even if management options are displayed in Cloud Foundry. For technical reasons it is not possible to create a service in Cloud Foundry and delete it using the STACKIT Portal/CLI, or vice versa.

Single Node vs. Cluster

Single Node

• Runs on a single VM
• Suitable for development and testing
• Not recommended for production use

Cluster (Replica Set)

• Consists of 3 nodes distributed across multiple availability zones
• Provides high availability and fault tolerance
• Recommended for production workloads
• Ensures service continuity even if a node or availability zone fails

Network access

STACKIT OpenSearch instances are accessible using public IP addresses, allowing integration with:

• Cloud Foundry applications
• Kubernetes workloads
• Virtual machines
• External systems

Access is secured through ACLs (Access Control Lists) and instance-level authentication.

Data management

Backup system

The integrated Backup Manager automatically creates full backups every 4 hours and retains them for 14 days. You can also trigger manual backups and restore from existing backups through the service dashboard.

Scalability

STACKIT OpenSearch uses a t-shirt sizing model with predefined service plans. When your workload grows, you can upgrade to a larger plan with more resources (vCPU, RAM, disk space).

Monitoring and Observability

Integration with STACKIT Observability is currently not supported for the OpenSearch service.