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The official Elasticsearch images are not only provided by Docker. There are also several customized images for custom purposes. Some of these are optimized for large cluster deployments or more complex Elasticsearch cluster topologies than the standard ones.

Docker is very handy for testing several versions of Elasticsearch in a clean way, without installing too much stuff on the host machine.

In the code repository directory ch01/docker/, there is a docker-compose.yaml file that provides a full environment that will set up the following elements:

• elasticsearch, which will be available at http://localhost:9200
• kibana, which will be available at http://localhost:5601
• cerebro, which will be available at http://localhost:9000

To install all the applications, you can simply execute docker-compose up -d. All the required binaries will be downloaded and installed in Docker, and they will then be ready to be used.