Elasticsearch

Elasticsearch is a distributed search and analytics engine and data store, built to search and analyze very large datasets in near real time. Beyond classic full-text search, it also functions as a vector database, supporting vector search and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) patterns for generative-AI applications.

It's commonly used for full-text search, application and infrastructure logs, metrics, application performance monitoring (APM), and security log analysis - the same engine underlies the wider Elastic Stack (including Kibana for visualization). It can be run as a self-managed cluster (via Docker or a downloaded distribution) or as a managed deployment on Elastic Cloud.

Elasticsearch fits teams that need to index and query large, unstructured or semi-structured datasets - from search-driven product features to observability and security use cases - in one system rather than separate specialized tools.