Elasticsearch Cluster node migration from Old VM to New VM

Elastic Stack Elasticsearch
1

I currently run a 3-node Elasticsearch cluster (v8.17.0) and need to migrate to a new set of VMs with larger partitions. My goal is to move nodes one by one (lift-and-shift) without downtime. Here’s the migration approach

I’m considering:

Install Elasticsearch 8.17.0 on a new VM (same version as the existing cluster).

Copy /etc/elasticsearch/* config files from the old node to the new one, but update node.name, network.host, and discovery.seed_hosts.

Do not copy the path.data directory — instead, let the cluster replicate data automatically to the new node.

Start the new node, verify it joins the cluster.

Exclude the old node from shard allocation using: Wait for the cluster to turn green and shards to relocate.

Shut down the old node.

Repeat the process for the remaining two nodes until all are migrated.

Questions:

1. Is this the recommended approach for migrating nodes to new hardware in Elasticsearch 8.17.0?

2. Do I absolutely need to keep versions identical (8.17.0 → 8.17.0), or can I migrate to 8.17.1 or a higher patch release while doing this?

3.Since the .security index is replicated, can I rely on it to preserve all users/roles/passwords during migration, or will it make recreate everything again ?

4. Are there any pitfalls when replacing nodes one by one in a 3-node cluster that I should watch out for?

Thanks a lot in advance — I want to be sure this plan is solid before starting the migration.

2

Sounds good to me.

In theory you could upgrade at the same time, but in practice I’d recommend doing that as a separate step so that if you encounter any issues you can be sure it relates either to the node migration or to the upgrade. If you change two things at once, it could be either of those things which causes an issue.

Yes

I think you’ve covered everything in the process you described. Make sure you have a recent snapshot just in case.