What Is Open Distro for Elasticsearch? Features, Security, Alerting, SQL, and Version Evolution

Open Distro for Elasticsearch is an AWS‑announced open‑source distribution of Elasticsearch released in 2019. It is a completely community‑driven, 100% open‑source, enterprise‑grade enhanced version of Elasticsearch that ships with core features such as security, alerting, SQL, and deep performance analysis.

The distribution also bundles Kibana, the visualization component of the Elastic Stack, providing a familiar interface for users of the ELK stack.

Security : Open Distro offers advanced security capabilities, including multiple authentication options (e.g., Active Directory and OpenID), node‑to‑node encrypted communication, role‑based access control, and detailed audit logging.

Alerting : The platform provides a powerful, easy‑to‑use event monitoring and alerting system that can watch stored data and automatically send notifications. With an intuitive Kibana UI and robust APIs, users can configure and manage alerts, leveraging Elasticsearch’s query and scripting capabilities to define alert conditions.

SQL : Open Distro adds SQL query support, allowing users to interact with Elasticsearch clusters using familiar SQL syntax. It offers more than 40 functions, data types, and commands, including JOIN support and CSV export capabilities.

Performance Analyzer : This deep performance analyzer monitors Elasticsearch‑related metrics as well as network, disk, and operating‑system statistics. It runs independently and does not impact the performance of the Elasticsearch cluster.

Version Evolution : The latest release, Open Distro for Elasticsearch 0.9.0, is based on native Elasticsearch 6.7.1 and was published on May 1, 2019. Interested users can try this version and find the project at https://github.com/opendistro-for-elasticsearch .