Start and stop elasticsearch nodes in windows

I am trying to start elasticsearch as a process and stop it without closing the command prompt. For creating a new process, I am using:

The process runs on port 9200.

How can I get the process PID or name to use taskkill to kill this process using this command or something similar from either the already open command prompt or the existing command prompt in which the elasticsearch node process is running:

Pid of 5800(shown in process log in console above) did not work. Windows task manager did not have a process by the name elasticsearch. It only has a cmd process for the command prompt in which the elasticsearch is running and when I kill that process, the elasticsearch also gets killed.

2 Answers 2

I’d install and run Elasticsearch as a Windows service:

Windows users can configure Elasticsearch to run as a service to run in the background or start automatically at startup without any user interaction. This can be achieved through service.bat script under bin/ folder which allows one to install, remove, manage or configure the service and potentially start and stop the service, all from the command-line.

It let’s you run commands like start and stop to run and terminate elasticsearch from a script without having to track process ids or keep the same command prompt open.

To run multiple instances of Elasticsearch at the same time as services you will need to pass in a unique serviceid when installing the service:

The script requires one parameter (the command to execute) followed by an optional one indicating the service id (useful when installing multiple Elasticsearch services).

Regarding what port and IP address ES is running on it should be no different — but I’d check your config files (elasticsearch.yml) and your logging config (logging.yml). More detail on configuration options here:

If you Installing Elasticsearch as a Service on Windows, you can start/stop from the Services control panel, more info like start/stop use CMD see in the link.

The way above is convenient and correct. I try some other ways to stop ElasticSearch and record here,

Before knowing the method above, first I guess ElasticSearch may be a process in the Task Manager, so I found by name and really found a process name ElasticSearch.exe , but after I kill that process, I still can get ElasticSearch Info from http://localhost:9200/ which is the ElasticSearch port on my computer, that means ElasticSearch is still running.

Later I came up with that maybe I can kill it by port , I find an article using PowerShell to kill process by port, so I start a PowerShell, then execute Stop-Process -Id (Get-NetTCPConnection -LocalPort 9200).OwningProcess -Force , and it tells me:

Stop-Process : Cannot stop «java (22356)» process，Access Denied。 + Stop-Process -Id (Get-NetTCPConnection -LocalPort 9200).OwningProcess . +

Start elasticsearch on windows

You can run Elasticsearch on your own hardware, or use our hosted Elasticsearch Service on Elastic Cloud. The Elasticsearch Service is available on both AWS and GCP. Try out the Elasticsearch Service for free.

Installing Elasticsearch Yourselfedit

Elasticsearch is provided in the following package formats:

Linux and MacOS tar.gz archives

The tar.gz archives are available for installation on any Linux distribution and MacOS.

Windows .zip archive

The zip archive is suitable for installation on Windows.

The deb package is suitable for Debian, Ubuntu, and other Debian-based systems. Debian packages may be downloaded from the Elasticsearch website or from our Debian repository.

The rpm package is suitable for installation on Red Hat, Centos, SLES, OpenSuSE and other RPM-based systems. RPMs may be downloaded from the Elasticsearch website or from our RPM repository.

[ beta ] This functionality is in beta and is subject to change. The design and code is less mature than official GA features and is being provided as-is with no warranties. Beta features are not subject to the support SLA of official GA features. The msi package is suitable for installation on Windows 64-bit systems with at least .NET 4.5 framework installed, and is the easiest choice for getting started with Elasticsearch on Windows. MSIs may be downloaded from the Elasticsearch website.

Images are available for running Elasticsearch as Docker containers. They may be downloaded from the Elastic Docker Registry.

Formulae are available from the Elastic Homebrew tap for installing Elasticsearch on macOS with the Homebrew package manager.

Configuration Management Toolsedit

We also provide the following configuration management tools to help with large deployments:

Start elasticsearch on windows

Elasticsearch can be installed on Windows using the Windows .zip archive. This comes with a elasticsearch-service.bat command which will setup Elasticsearch to run as a service.

Elasticsearch has historically been installed on Windows using the .zip archive. An MSI installer package is available that provides the easiest getting started experience for Windows. You can continue using the .zip approach if you prefer.

This package contains both free and subscription features. Start a 30-day trial to try out all of the features.

On Windows the Elasticsearch machine learning feature requires the Microsoft Universal C Runtime library. This is built into Windows 10, Windows Server 2016 and more recent versions of Windows. For older versions of Windows it can be installed via Windows Update, or from a separate download. If you cannot install the Microsoft Universal C Runtime library you can still use the rest of Elasticsearch if you disable the machine learning feature.

The latest stable version of Elasticsearch can be found on the Download Elasticsearch page. Other versions can be found on the Past Releases page.

Elasticsearch includes a bundled version of OpenJDK from the JDK maintainers (GPLv2+CE). To use your own version of Java, see the JVM version requirements

Download and install the .zip packageedit

Unzip it with your favourite unzip tool. This will create a folder called elasticsearch-7.12.0 , which we will refer to as %ES_HOME% . In a terminal window, cd to the %ES_HOME% directory, for instance:

Enable automatic creation of system indicesedit

Some commercial features automatically create indices within Elasticsearch. By default, Elasticsearch is configured to allow automatic index creation, and no additional steps are required. However, if you have disabled automatic index creation in Elasticsearch, you must configure action.auto_create_index in elasticsearch.yml to allow the commercial features to create the following indices:

If you are using Logstash or Beats then you will most likely require additional index names in your action.auto_create_index setting, and the exact value will depend on your local configuration. If you are unsure of the correct value for your environment, you may consider setting the value to * which will allow automatic creation of all indices.

Running Elasticsearch from the command lineedit

Elasticsearch can be started from the command line as follows:

If you have password-protected the Elasticsearch keystore, you will be prompted to enter the keystore’s password. See Secure settings for more details.

By default, Elasticsearch runs in the foreground, prints its logs to STDOUT , and can be stopped by pressing Ctrl-C .

Configuring Elasticsearch on the command lineedit

Elasticsearch loads its configuration from the %ES_HOME%\config\elasticsearch.yml file by default. The format of this config file is explained in Configuring Elasticsearch.

Any settings that can be specified in the config file can also be specified on the command line, using the -E syntax as follows:

Values that contain spaces must be surrounded with quotes. For instance -Epath.logs=»C:\My Logs\logs» .

Typically, any cluster-wide settings (like cluster.name ) should be added to the elasticsearch.yml config file, while any node-specific settings such as node.name could be specified on the command line.

Checking that Elasticsearch is runningedit

You can test that your Elasticsearch node is running by sending an HTTP request to port 9200 on localhost :

which should give you a response something like this:

Installing Elasticsearch as a Service on Windowsedit

Elasticsearch can be installed as a service to run in the background or start automatically at boot time without any user interaction. This can be achieved through the elasticsearch-service.bat script in the bin\ folder which allows one to install, remove, manage or configure the service and potentially start and stop the service, all from the command-line.

The script requires one parameter (the command to execute) followed by an optional one indicating the service id (useful when installing multiple Elasticsearch services).

The commands available are:

Install Elasticsearch as a service

Remove the installed Elasticsearch service (and stop the service if started)

Start the Elasticsearch service (if installed)

Stop the Elasticsearch service (if started)

Start a GUI for managing the installed service

The name of the service and the value of ES_JAVA_HOME will be made available during install:

While a JRE can be used for the Elasticsearch service, due to its use of a client VM (as opposed to a server JVM which offers better performance for long-running applications) its usage is discouraged and a warning will be issued.

The system environment variable ES_JAVA_HOME should be set to the path to the JDK installation that you want the service to use. If you upgrade the JDK, you are not required to the reinstall the service but you must set the value of the system environment variable ES_JAVA_HOME to the path to the new JDK installation. However, upgrading across JVM types (e.g. JRE versus SE) is not supported, and does require the service to be reinstalled.

Customizing service settingsedit

The Elasticsearch service can be configured prior to installation by setting the following environment variables (either using the set command from the command line, or through the System Properties->Environment Variables GUI).

A unique identifier for the service. Useful if installing multiple instances on the same machine. Defaults to elasticsearch-service-x64 .

The user to run as, defaults to the local system account.

The password for the user specified in %SERVICE_USERNAME% .

The name of the service. Defaults to Elasticsearch %SERVICE_ID% .

The description of the service. Defaults to Elasticsearch Windows Service — https://elastic.co .

The installation directory of the desired JVM to run the service under.

Service log directory, defaults to %ES_HOME%\logs . Note that this does not control the path for the Elasticsearch logs; the path for these is set via the setting path.logs in the elasticsearch.yml configuration file, or on the command line.

Configuration file directory (which needs to include elasticsearch.yml , jvm.options , and log4j2.properties files), defaults to %ES_HOME%\config .

Any additional JVM system properties you may want to apply.

Startup mode for the service. Can be either auto or manual (default).

The timeout in seconds that procrun waits for service to exit gracefully. Defaults to 0 .

At its core, elasticsearch-service.bat relies on Apache Commons Daemon project to install the service. Environment variables set prior to the service installation are copied and will be used during the service lifecycle. This means any changes made to them after the installation will not be picked up unless the service is reinstalled.

By default, Elasticsearch automatically sizes JVM heap based on a node’s roles and total memory. We recommend this default sizing for most production environments. If needed, you can override default sizing by manually setting the heap size.

When installing Elasticsearch on Windows as a service for the first time or running Elasticsearch from the command line, you can manually set the heap size as described in Setting JVM heap size. To resize the heap for an already installed service, use the service manager: bin\elasticsearch-service.bat manager .

The service automatically configures a private temporary directory for use by Elasticsearch when it is running. This private temporary directory is configured as a sub-directory of the private temporary directory for the user running the installation. If the service will run under a different user, you can configure the location of the temporary directory that the service should use by setting the environment variable ES_TMPDIR to the preferred location before you execute the service installation.

Most changes (like JVM settings) made through the manager GUI will require a restart of the service in order to take affect.

Directory layout of .zip archiveedit

The .zip package is entirely self-contained. All files and directories are, by default, contained within %ES_HOME% — the directory created when unpacking the archive.

This is very convenient because you don’t have to create any directories to start using Elasticsearch, and uninstalling Elasticsearch is as easy as removing the %ES_HOME% directory. However, it is advisable to change the default locations of the config directory, the data directory, and the logs directory so that you do not delete important data later on.

home

Elasticsearch home directory or %ES_HOME%

Directory created by unpacking the archive

bin

Binary scripts including elasticsearch to start a node and elasticsearch-plugin to install plugins

conf

Configuration files including elasticsearch.yml

data

The location of the data files of each index / shard allocated on the node. Can hold multiple locations.

logs

Log files location.

plugins

Plugin files location. Each plugin will be contained in a subdirectory.

repo

Shared file system repository locations. Can hold multiple locations. A file system repository can be placed in to any subdirectory of any directory specified here.

Next stepsedit

You now have a test Elasticsearch environment set up. Before you start serious development or go into production with Elasticsearch, you must do some additional setup:

Type	Description	Default Location	Setting