Chainguard Container for elasticsearch

Chainguard Containers are regularly-updated, secure-by-default container images.

Download this Container Image

For those with access, this container image is available on cgr.dev:

docker pull cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/elasticsearch:latest

Be sure to replace the ORGANIZATION placeholder with the name used for your organization's private repository within the Chainguard Registry.

Compatibility Notes

The Chainguard elasticsearch container image is comparable to the Elasticsearch image available from Elastic, but with the following notable differences:

• JDK

  • Elastic: Bundles JDK inside the distribution.
  • Chainguard: Uses the system-provided Chainguard JDK /usr/lib/jvm/java-<version>-openjdk. This means there is no jdk/ directory in /usr/share/elasticsearch. This approach helps with patching and allows for smaller container images.

• Config files

  • Elastic: Ships elasticsearch.yml and log4j2.properties.
  • Chainguard: Includes elasticsearch.yml and log4j2.properties, plus example files like elasticsearch.example.yml (so upgrades don't overwrite your configs). You can drop in your own logging configurations if needed.

• Logging behavior

  • Elastic: JSON logs to stdout; no application log files (only garbage collection logs).
  • Chainguard: Defaults to plaintext logs to stdout and also writes log files under /usr/share/elasticsearch/logs/ (e.g., docker-cluster.log, docker-cluster_server.json,gc.log).
    • To restore upstream-style JSON-to-stdout and disable file logs, provide your own log4j2.properties in /usr/share/elasticsearch/config/.

• Filesystem layout

  • Elastic: Everything is installed under the elasticsearch-<version>/ directory.
  • Chainguard: Follows distro conventions, installs into /usr/share/elasticsearch/ and symlinks binaries to /usr/bin/.

Getting Started

Run Elasticsearch in single-node mode:

docker run -d \
  --name elasticsearch \
  -p 9200:9200 \
  -e "discovery.type=single-node" \
  -e "xpack.security.enabled=false" \
  -e "ES_JAVA_OPTS=-Xms256m -Xmx256m" \
  cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/elasticsearch:latest

The ES_JAVA_OPTS environment variable sets the JVM heap size, which is essential for Elasticsearch performance and to prevent out-of-memory errors.

Test the cluster status:

curl http://localhost:9200

{
  "name" : "a431c8b4f3b1",
  "cluster_name" : "docker-cluster",
  "cluster_uuid" : "gKsPq8N4RiGQpidQ4289pA",
  "version" : {
    "number" : "9.0.2",
    "build_flavor" : "default",
    "build_type" : "docker"
    . . .
  },
  "tagline" : "You Know, for Search"
}

For data persistence, mount a volume to the data directory. Note that if you followed the previous example you will need to stop and remove the elasticsearch container in order to execute this example:

docker run -d \
  --name elasticsearch-persist \
  -p 9200:9200 \
  -v $(pwd)/elasticsearch-data:/usr/share/elasticsearch/data \
  -e "discovery.type=single-node" \
  -e "xpack.security.enabled=false" \
  -e "ES_JAVA_OPTS=-Xms256m -Xmx256m" \
  cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/elasticsearch:latest

Documentation and Resources

• Elasticsearch Docker Documentation
• Elasticsearch REST API Reference

What are Chainguard Containers?

Chainguard's free tier of Starter container images are built with Wolfi, our minimal Linux undistro.

All other Chainguard Containers are built with Chainguard OS, Chainguard's minimal Linux operating system designed to produce container images that meet the requirements of a more secure software supply chain.

The main features of Chainguard Containers include:

• Minimal design, without unnecessary software bloat
• Daily builds to ensure container images are up-to-date with available security patches
• High quality build-time SBOMs attesting to the provenance of all artifacts within the image
• Verifiable signatures provided by Sigstore
• Reproducible builds with Cosign and apko (read more about reproducibility)

For cases where you need container images with shells and package managers to build or debug, most Chainguard Containers come paired with a development, or -dev, variant.

In all other cases, including Chainguard Containers tagged as :latest or with a specific version number, the container images include only an open-source application and its runtime dependencies. These minimal container images typically do not contain a shell or package manager.

Although the -dev container image variants have similar security features as their more minimal versions, they include additional software that is typically not necessary in production environments. We recommend using multi-stage builds to copy artifacts from the -dev variant into a more minimal production image.

Need additional packages?

To improve security, Chainguard Containers include only essential dependencies. Need more packages? Chainguard customers can use Custom Assembly to add packages, either through the Console, chainctl, or API.

To use Custom Assembly in the Chainguard Console: navigate to the image you'd like to customize in your Organization's list of images, and click on the Customize image button at the top of the page.

Learn More

Refer to our Chainguard Containers documentation on Chainguard Academy. Chainguard also offers VMs and Libraries — contact us for access.

Trademarks

This software listing is packaged by Chainguard. The trademarks set forth in this offering are owned by their respective companies, and use of them does not imply any affiliation, sponsorship, or endorsement by such companies.