How to do it…

We will start by downloading Elasticsearch from the web. The latest version is always downloadable at https://www.elastic.co/downloads/elasticsearch. The versions that are available for different operating systems are as follows:

• elasticsearch-{version-number}.zip and elasticsearch-{version-number}.msi are for the Windows operating systems.
• elasticsearch-{version-number}.tar.gz is for Linux/macOS X, while elasticsearch-{version-number}.deb is for Debian-based Linux distributions (this also covers the Ubuntu family); this is installable with Debian using the dpkg -i elasticsearch-*.deb command.
• elasticsearch-{version-number}.rpm is for Red Hat-based Linux distributions (this also covers the Cent OS family). This is installable with the rpm -i elasticsearch-*.rpm command.

Extract the binary content. After downloading the correct release for your platform, the installation involves expanding the archive in a working directory.

For the Windows platform, a good directory in which to install Elasticsearch could be c:\es, on Unix and /opt/es on macOS X.

To run Elasticsearch, you need a JVM 1.8 or higher installed. For better performance, I suggest that you use the latest Sun/Oracle version.

Let's start Elasticsearch to check if everything is working. To start your Elasticsearch server, just access the directory, and for Linux and macOS X execute the following:

# bin/elasticsearch

Alternatively, you can type the following command line for Windows:

# bin\elasticserch.bat

Your server should now start up and show logs similar to the following:

[2018-10-28T16:19:41,189][INFO ][o.e.n.Node ] [] initializing ...
 [2018-10-28T16:19:41,245][INFO ][o.e.e.NodeEnvironment ] [fyBySLM] using [1] data paths, mounts [[/ (/dev/disk1s1)]], net usable_space [141.9gb], net total_space [465.6gb], types [apfs]
 [2018-10-28T16:19:41,246][INFO ][o.e.e.NodeEnvironment ] [fyBySLM] heap size [989.8mb], compressed ordinary object pointers [true]
 [2018-10-28T16:19:41,247][INFO ][o.e.n.Node ] [fyBySLM] node name derived from node ID [fyBySLMcR3uqKiYC32P5Sg]; set [node.name] to override
 [2018-10-28T16:19:41,247][INFO ][o.e.n.Node ] [fyBySLM] version[6.4.2], pid[50238], build[default/tar/04711c2/2018-09-26T13:34:09.098244Z], OS[Mac OS X/10.14/x86_64], JVM[Oracle Corporation/Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM/1.8.0_181/25.181-b13]
 [2018-10-28T16:19:41,247][INFO ][o.e.n.Node ] [fyBySLM] JVM arguments [-Xms1g, -Xmx1g,
... truncated ...
 [2018-10-28T16:19:42,511][INFO ][o.e.p.PluginsService ] [fyBySLM] loaded module [aggs-matrix-stats]
 [2018-10-28T16:19:42,511][INFO ][o.e.p.PluginsService ] [fyBySLM] loaded module [analysis-common]
 ...truncated...
[2018-10-28T16:19:42,513][INFO ][o.e.p.PluginsService ] [fyBySLM] no plugins loaded
 ...truncated...
[2018-10-28T16:19:46,776][INFO ][o.e.n.Node ] [fyBySLM] initialized
 [2018-10-28T16:19:46,777][INFO ][o.e.n.Node ] [fyBySLM] starting ...
 [2018-10-28T16:19:46,930][INFO ][o.e.t.TransportService ] [fyBySLM] publish_address {127.0.0.1:9300}, bound_addresses {[::1]:9300}, {127.0.0.1:9300}
 [2018-10-28T16:19:49,983][INFO ][o.e.c.s.MasterService ] [fyBySLM] zen-disco-elected-as-master ([0] nodes joined)[, ], reason: new_master {fyBySLM}{fyBySLMcR3uqKiYC32P5Sg}{-pUWNdRlTwKuhv89iQ6psg}{127.0.0.1}{127.0.0.1:9300}{ml.machine_memory=17179869184, xpack.installed=true, ml.max_open_jobs=20, ml.enabled=true}
 ...truncated...
[2018-10-28T16:19:50,452][INFO ][o.e.l.LicenseService ] [fyBySLM] license [b2754b17-a4ec-47e4-9175-4b2e0d714a45] mode [basic] - valid