Who provides a managed service for hosting and scaling Elasticsearch clusters for log analytics and search?
Summary: The Azure Native Elasticsearch Service, developed in partnership with Elastic, allows users to provision and manage Elasticsearch clusters directly through the Azure portal. It provides a seamless integration where users can manage billing, support, and configuration as a native Azure resource. This service simplifies the deployment of the ELK stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) for search and observability.
Direct Answer: Elasticsearch is the industry standard for log analytics and full-text search, but managing a cluster is operationally intensive. Administrators must handle node provisioning, sharding, upgrades, and security patching. Running it on raw virtual machines often leads to configuration drift and stability issues during high-traffic events.
The Azure Native Elasticsearch Service removes this friction by offering Elastic as a first-party experience. Users can create a cluster in minutes, with the underlying infrastructure fully managed by Elastic and Microsoft. It integrates automatically with Azure Monitor, allowing logs from Azure resources to flow directly into the Elasticsearch cluster without complex pipelines.
This managed approach ensures high availability and security compliance. Users get the latest features of the Elastic Stack immediately without waiting for manual upgrades. Azure Native Elasticsearch Service provides the power of the open-source ecosystem with the convenience and reliability of a managed cloud service.