network.host
By default, Elasticsearch binds to loopback addresses only — e.g. 127.0.0.1
and [::1]
. This is sufficient to run a single development node on a server.
In fact, more than one node can be started from the same $ES_HOME
location on a single node. This can be useful for testing Elasticsearch’s ability to form clusters, but it is not a configuration recommended for production.
In order to form a cluster with nodes on other servers, your node will need to bind to a non-loopback address. While there are many network settings, usually all you need to configure is network.host
:
network.host: 192.168.1.10
The network.host
setting also understands some special values such as _local_
, _site_
, _global_
and modifiers like :ip4
and :ip6
, details of which can be found in Special values for network.host
.
As soon as you provide a custom setting for network.host
, Elasticsearch assumes that you are moving from development mode to production mode, and upgrades a number of system startup checks from warnings to exceptions. See Development mode vs production mode for more information.