What is the latest and most stable version recommended for migration, which has been on the market long enough, for a cluster with dozens of nodes?

Elastic Stack Elasticsearch
1

Hello,

What is the latest and most stable ELK version recommended for migration, which has been on the market long enough, for a cluster with dozens of nodes?

2

The latest version is always the recommended one as it has the latest security and bug fixes.

3

It's true that the latest version includes the most up-to-date security patches and bug fixes. However, many people prefer not to install a version that hasn't been exposed long enough or thoroughly tested for performance and stability.

4

elasticsearch has a rapid release cadence, has pretty much always been the case.

You can obviously install whichever version you prefer. If you want to install one from approx 1 year ago, then 8.12.2 will fit the bill. That's existed for a year, is that long enough?

If you want a 2 years old version, then 8.6.2 was released February 16, 2023.

has the full list of what was released when.

I presume you know a lot about elasticsearch already, as you intend to install a cluster with dozens of nodes? btw, you wrote also "... recommended for migration" - migration from what ? If from another (older) elasticsearch version, there can be a pretty specific sequence of versions you need to traverse.

And I wish you luck with your project.

5

Me...

I would recommend 8.17.2 It is the Latest and stable.

Elastic is running some very large internal clusters on this build.

As we reach the "End of the 8.x" build numbers these build tend to be solid with feature enhancement but not large underlying platform changes.

If I were to pick a build prior I would pick 8.14.3 as there were some templating / ILM issues with respect to APM in 8.15 and 8.16.

If you are coming from a much older build the advancements will far outweigh the risks.

There was quite a bit of changes in the early 8.x s

This is my opinion / observations.

1 Like
6

We are running elasticsearch version 7.5.1

7

Wow!!! That is quite old...

You Will need to upgrade to 7.17.latest first before migrating to 8.x

Once at 7.17.latest then you can chose the version to get to 8.x...

I would recommend 8.17.2 or 8.14.3 (oldest)

1 Like
8

Hi Stephen

โ€Does your recommendation apply only to an upgrade, or also to a migration?

9

To get more context, there's a sort of parallel discussion in thread