How to Install and Use Cerebro for Easy Elasticsearch Cluster Management
This guide explains what Cerebro is, how to install it (including binary and Docker options), how to run it on Linux, macOS, and Windows, and how to use its UI to connect to an Elasticsearch node, view cluster overviews, manage shards, and execute DSL queries.
Cerebro is the evolution of the former Elasticsearch plugin Elasticsearch Kopf and no longer works with Elasticsearch 5.x or later because site plugins were removed.
It provides one of the most useful graphical interfaces for viewing shard allocation and performing common index operations. The project is fully open‑source, supports user, password, or LDAP authentication, and is a partial rewrite of the previous plugin that can run as a standalone application built on the Scala Play framework.
Cerebro is a modern reactive application: its backend is written in Scala using Play for REST communication with Elasticsearch, while the frontend is a single‑page application built with AngularJS.
Installation
The binaries are available at . Java 1.8 or newer is required.
wget -c https://github.com/lmenezes/cerebro/releases/download/v0.8.5/cerebro-0.8.5.tgz
tar xfvz cerebro-0.8.5.tgzThe latest release at the time of writing is version 0.8.5. Docker users can refer to the cerebro‑docker repository.
Running Cerebro
Start the application with: cerebro-0.8.5/bin/cerebro On Windows use the batch file: cerebro-0.8.5/bin/cerebro.bat After launching, open http://0.0.0.0:9000/ in a browser.
Enter the address of your Elasticsearch node and click the Connect button.
The Overview tab shows the overall status of the connected node.
The Nodes tab displays detailed node information.
The Rest tab lets you submit DSL requests, similar to Kibana’s Dev Tools but without autocomplete.
The More tab provides additional utilities.
The status bar shows the cluster health; a yellow status indicates that more nodes are needed to allocate shards properly.
Cerebro offers a convenient UI for managing Elasticsearch clusters, and readers are encouraged to explore its additional features.
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Programmer DD
A tinkering programmer and author of "Spring Cloud Microservices in Action"
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