Upgrade to elasticsearch 1.6.0 - JVM incompatibility

Installation is failing with the below error ,

{1.6.0}: Initialization Failed ...

our current java version is

java version "1.7.0_51"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0_51-b13)

What should be the minimum required JVM version that we need to upgrade to on java 1.7, cannot move to java 1.8

1.7u55 and above, per https://www.elastic.co/subscriptions/matrix

Thanks Mark, how do I make elasticsearch to use the upgraded jre which is installed at a different path and not the one at JAVA_HOME. The existing 1.7.0_51 JRE at JAVA_HOME is used by several other java processes on this server and do not want to impact them.

Its different depending on how you've installed Elasticsearch. If you used the .deb you put it in /etc/defaults/elasticsearch as

JAVA_HOME=/usr/share/SOME_OTHER_JAVA