# Elasticsearch cluster - container vs. native

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-cluster-container-vs-native/375427>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Tags:** docker\
**Created:** [March 5, 2025, 6:42am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-cluster-container-vs-native/375427 "2025-03-05T06:42:04Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![gruens](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/278dde/32.png) [@gruens](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/gruens)\
**Post date:** [March 5, 2025, 6:42am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-cluster-container-vs-native/375427/1 "2025-03-05T06:42:04Z")

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Hello Community,

we already run two non-critical three node clusters on vsphere virtual machines (RHEL) with podman.  
The criticality will increase in the future, so we want to relaunch/improve our current instances.  
I started reading the officials docs and stumbled across the following section:

_To try out Elasticsearch on your own machine, we recommend using Docker and running both Elasticsearch and Kibana. For more information, see...  
Please note that this setup is not suitable for production use._

> **[Installing Elasticsearch | Elasticsearch Guide \[8.17\] | Elastic](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/install-elasticsearch.html#elasticsearch-deployment-options)**

Does this mean, running an on-premise cluster via containers isnt suitable for production use?

What are your oppinions between running a cluster on "RHEL + Podman + ES" and "RHEL + ES".

We are experienced with containers and have already automized the installation/update process of elasticsearch via ansible-plays but because of the new criticality, we were also ready to rethink the whole configuration.

Thank you.

Kind regards,  
UGS

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**Author:** ![Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/christian_dahlqvist/32/4617_2.png) [@Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Christian_Dahlqvist)\
**Post date:** [March 5, 2025, 6:56am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-cluster-container-vs-native/375427/2 "2025-03-05T06:56:02Z")

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I believe that comment is around the specific configuration provided as an example and not containers in general. I know of large deployments, e.g. Elastic Cloud, running successfully on containers so that is not an issue. You can run it on bare-metal hardware, virtual machines or containers but which you choose will naturally impact how you manage it and optimise performance.

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [April 2, 2025, 6:56am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-cluster-container-vs-native/375427/3 "2025-04-02T06:56:39Z")

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