What is Amazon OpenSearch Service?
Amazon OpenSearch Service is a fully managed search and analytics engine based on OpenSearch, the open-source fork of Elasticsearch 7.10 created in 2021. The service handles deployment, operation, and scaling of the engine, letting you index, search, and analyze large volumes of data in near real time.
OpenSearch combines powerful full-text search with real-time analytics, vector search, and security analytics, and is well suited for log analysis, e-commerce search, application monitoring, and security analytics. You can choose between classic Managed Clusters with full configuration control and the serverless deployment option, OpenSearch Serverless, which removes the need for capacity planning.
Core Features
- Managed Clusters and Serverless: Flexible deployment options depending on your control and scaling needs.
- OpenSearch Dashboards: Built-in visualization and management interface.
- Multi-tier storage: Hot, UltraWarm, and Cold Storage (built on Amazon S3) for cost optimization of historical data.
- k-NN vector search: Built-in algorithms for vector, similarity, and semantic search, for example in RAG applications.
- Anomaly detection and security analytics: ML-based outlier detection plus pre-built Sigma rules for security analysis.
- Regular version updates: Amazon OpenSearch Service keeps pace with current OpenSearch releases, including newer features for agentic AI workloads.
Typical Use Cases
Log analysis: Aggregate logs from distributed systems and analyze them with dashboards and alerting. Integration with CloudWatch, Kinesis, and Lambda enables automatic ingestion.
Full-text search: E-commerce product search with faceting, auto-complete, and relevance tuning, supported by language-specific analyzers for numerous languages.
Security analytics: Analyze CloudTrail, VPC Flow Logs, and WAF logs. Anomaly detection automatically identifies unusual patterns, and pre-built rule sets speed up threat detection.
Benefits
- Compatible with the OpenSearch ecosystem as well as older Elasticsearch 7.10 APIs for straightforward migration.
- Cost-efficient storage tiering for large volumes of historical data.
- Built-in ML features for anomaly and threat detection.
- Flexible choice between fully configurable clusters and serverless deployment.
Integration with innFactory
As an AWS Reseller, innFactory supports you with Amazon OpenSearch Service: we help with cluster sizing, query optimization, dashboard development, and migration from self-hosted Elasticsearch or OpenSearch clusters.
Available Tiers & Options
Managed Clusters
- Full control over cluster configuration and instance types
- Multi-AZ deployments for high availability
- Storage tiering across Hot, UltraWarm, and Cold Storage
- Manual capacity planning required
Serverless
- Automatic scaling based on workload
- No capacity planning
- Pay only for OCUs and storage consumed
- Limited plugin support compared to Managed Clusters
Typical Use Cases
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Amazon OpenSearch Service?
Amazon OpenSearch Service is a fully managed search and analytics engine based on the open-source OpenSearch project. It enables log analysis, full-text search, vector search, and application monitoring, either as managed clusters or as serverless collections.
What is the difference between OpenSearch and Elasticsearch?
OpenSearch is an AWS-initiated open-source fork of Elasticsearch 7.10 under the Apache 2.0 license, developed independently ever since with additions such as vector search, anomaly detection, and agentic AI capabilities. Amazon OpenSearch Service supports both current OpenSearch versions and older Elasticsearch versions up to 7.10.
When should I use Serverless instead of Managed Clusters?
Serverless suits unpredictable or intermittent workloads and development environments, since no capacity planning is required. Managed Clusters make sense for steady production load when you need full control over instance types, configuration, and plugins.
What is UltraWarm?
UltraWarm is a cost-effective storage tier for less frequently accessed, older data that can reduce cost per GB by nearly 90 percent compared to hot storage, at slightly higher query latency. Cold Storage, built on Amazon S3, complements the tiering model for even cheaper archival.
How much does Amazon OpenSearch Service cost?
With Managed Clusters you pay for instance hours and storage used; with Serverless you pay for OpenSearch Compute Units (OCUs) and storage consumed. There are no flat fixed prices; AWS publishes current rates on its official pricing page.
Note: All product information on this page has been compiled with care, but is provided without guarantee and may be outdated or incomplete. Cloud services evolve rapidly — features, pricing, SLAs, and availability change frequently. Authoritative and up-to-date information can only be found on the official product page of AWS (official documentation). This page does not represent an offer by AWS.