ROR cluster with Elastic Cloud integration

ROR-based cluster with remote X-Pack Security cluster on Elastic Cloud integration

ReadonlyREST plugin cannot be installed on Elastic Cloud. But we can still take advantage of ROR's features with a little, smart trick - the remote cluster Elasticsearch feature. A self-managed ROR-based cluster can access an Elastic Cloud cluster when the latter is configured as a remote cluster in the first one.

Solution Architecture

Solution architecture

The two clusters will communicate at a transport level. The communication will be secured by two-way SSL. Because both clusters have to be configured to trust each other, the initial configuration procedure requires attention. But we prepared a demo that provides an interactive guide to properly set up the clusters automatically. Moreover, details of the setup are described below. Let's start!

Configuration

Depending on what you need now, you may be interested in either:

• Quick Start using our docker-based Playground

• Detailed explanation on how to set up the solution

Testing

You can test the setup using Kibana sample web logs. Let's see how to do it in a few steps:

1. Open your browser and go to your Elastic Cloud deployment Kibana and add "Sample web logs".

2. In a new browser tab, open your local ROR cluster Kibana (http://localhost:15601/) and log in as admin (admin:admin).

3. Pick Stack Management in the Kibana menu, go to Data views, and click Create data view to create the data view to explore the sample logs from the Elastic cloud cluster.

   

   Creating data view 1
4. Fill out the form to create a data view:

   a) pick Name (it doesn't matter what you enter here) b) enter index pattern escloud:kibana* c) one index should be matched: escloud:kibana_sample_logs d) click Save data view to Kibana

   

   Creating data view 2
5. Pick Discover in the Kibana menu. You should see the data. It's great, but currently, you are logged as admin who has access to all indices. Let's try with a different user. Click Log out.

   

   Discover - admin
6. Let's log in as user1 (user1:test). This user has RO access and should be able to see escloud:kibana_sample* indices (check readonlyrest.yml or ROR's settings editor while being logged as admin). Go to Discover in the Kibana menu and check if you see all the logs from the Elastic Cloud cluster.

   

   Discover - user1
7. As you saw, the cross-cluster search and Kibana integration works well :) This is the basic setup and the simple use case. Now, you can play with it and try to do something more complicated.