Elasticsearch as a Search API backend

As a site grows, you'll probably find Core's search to be inadequate for what you need, either because of high database load during searches or a need for "smarter" search results. For a long time now, the solution has been to replace Core's search with Apache SOLR via the Search API module.

Administering and scaling SOLR can be difficult, especially if you are needing clustering. But now there's another solution available that's also built on Lucene: Elasticsearch.

Elasticsearch is a schema-less search application that intelligently defines the schema for a document based on the JSON object that you feed it. It is also remarkably easy to scale in a clustering environment with multicast discovery and automatic rebalancing.

The Search API Elasticsearch module allows you to use Elasticsearch as a backend for Search API so that your Drupal site can leverage the features of Elasticsearch.

This session will provide a brief introduction to Elasticsearch, key differences between SOLR and Elasticsearch, information on how to quickly get a Drupal site to use Elasticsearch, and the current status and future direction of the Search API Elasticsearch module. Additionally, the current state and roadmap of Search API Elasticsearch for Drupal 8 will be discussed.

Brian Altenhofel is the current maintainer of the Search API Elasticsearch module.