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Elasticsearch

What is Elasticsearch?​

Elasticsearch is a distributed search and analytics engine built on Apache Lucene. It's the "ES" in the ELK stack and a common backend for full-text search, log analytics, and Laravel Scout's Elasticsearch driver. Laradock builds it as its own container from the official image.

Start Elasticsearch​

docker compose up -d elasticsearch

The elasticsearch/compose.yml lists php-fpm as a dependency, so php-fpm starts automatically alongside it.

Stop Elasticsearch​

docker compose stop elasticsearch

This stops the container without deleting its data (kept in the elasticsearch volume). To remove the container: docker compose rm -f elasticsearch.

Configuration​

Laradock builds the image from elasticsearch/Dockerfile using the shared ELK_VERSION variable in the root .env (also used by kibana), plus these settings in elasticsearch/defaults.env:

VariableDefaultWhat it does
ELASTICSEARCH_HOST_HTTP_PORT9200Host-side port for the REST API (container port 9200).
ELASTICSEARCH_HOST_TRANSPORT_PORT9300Host-side port for the transport/cluster protocol (container port 9300).

The container also runs single-node with security disabled by default (xpack.security.enabled=false), and JVM heap capped at -Xms512m -Xmx512m via ES_JAVA_OPTS, both set directly in elasticsearch/compose.yml.

Connect​

Open http://localhost:9200 from your host, or http://elasticsearch:9200 from another container. There's no authentication by default since the security plugin is disabled, unlike the hosted Elastic Cloud default of user elastic / a generated password.

Install a plugin​

docker compose exec elasticsearch /usr/share/elasticsearch/bin/plugin install <plugin-name>
docker compose restart elasticsearch

Common issues​

  • Container exits immediately or fails healthcheck. Elasticsearch needs vm.max_map_count to be at least 262144 on the Docker host. On Linux, set it with sysctl -w vm.max_map_count=262144; Docker Desktop on macOS/Windows usually handles this for you.
  • bootstrap.memory_lock warnings. The compose file sets memlock ulimits to unlimited already; if your Docker daemon still refuses to lock memory, check your host's own ulimits.
  • Out-of-memory kills under load. Heap is fixed at 512MB via ES_JAVA_OPTS in elasticsearch/compose.yml. Raise it there if you're indexing large datasets locally.
  • Can't reach it from another container. Use the container name elasticsearch as the host, not localhost, from inside workspace or php-fpm.

Need a UI to browse indices? See Dejavu. Need dashboards? See Kibana. New to Laradock? Start with Getting Started.