# 🎉 What’s new in Elastic 8.12
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-s-new-in-elastic-8-12/351339
**Category:** Announcements
**Created:** [January 18, 2024, 9:27am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-s-new-in-elastic-8-12/351339 "2024-01-18T09:27:59Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@dadoonet](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dadoonet)
#### Post date: [January 18, 2024, 9:27am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-s-new-in-elastic-8-12/351339/1 "2024-01-18T09:27:59Z")
# 🎉 What’s new in Elastic 8.12
Learn about Elastic 8.12 which includes the GA of the Elastic AI Assistant for Observability, update to Apache Lucene 9.9 with scalar quantization, new machine learning capabilities, CSPM integration for Microsoft Azure, enhanced Elastic Agent functionality, and more.
[Elastic Search](https://www.elastic.co/enterprise-search) helps developers implement modern search and discovery experiences. [The 8.12 release](https://www.elastic.co/blog/whats-new-elastic-search-8-12-0) includes the update to Apache Lucene 9.9, new machine learning capabilities, the GA of connectors (such as Azure Blob Storage, Google Cloud Storage, Amazon S3 and more), a simplified developer experience with many `_inference` API enhancements, and more.
[Elastic Security](https://www.elastic.co/security) unifies SIEM, endpoint security, and cloud security to detect, investigate, and respond to threats at cloud scale. [The 8.12 release](https://www.elastic.co/blog/whats-new-elastic-security-8-12-0) includes the technical preview of [real-time personalized alert insights in the Elastic AI Assistant for Security](https://www.elastic.co/blog/whats-new-elastic-security-8-12-0#get-intuitive,-real-time-alert-insights-with-natural-language-interactions-from-the-elastic-ai-assistant-for-security), the GA of [CSPM integration for Microsoft Azure](https://www.elastic.co/blog/whats-new-elastic-security-8-12-0#unlock-unified-cloud-security-posture-management-across-aws,-google-cloud,-and-azure-) (all 3 major hyperscalers are now covered!), the tech preview of [two-way integration with SentinelOne](https://www.elastic.co/blog/whats-new-elastic-security-8-12-0#orchestrate-response-across-endpoint-vendors-with-elastic-security), the GA of [alert assignment enhancements](https://www.elastic.co/blog/whats-new-elastic-security-8-12-0#enhancing-collaboration-and-response-with-alert-assignment), and more.
[Elastic Observability](https://www.elastic.co/observability) transforms metrics, logs, and traces into actionable IT insights to unify observability across the digital ecosystem. [The 8.12 release](https://www.elastic.co/blog/whats-new-elastic-observability-8-12-0) brings the GA of [Elastic AI Assistant for Observability](https://www.elastic.co/blog/whats-new-elastic-observability-8-12-0#train-your-ai-assistant-with-an-internal-knowledge-base) which comes with an integrated knowledge base for organizations to link their application documentation to train the AI Assistant responses about the Observability data, GA of [SLO updates](https://www.elastic.co/blog/whats-new-elastic-observability-8-12-0#service-level-objectives-(slos)-), [mobile APM support](https://www.elastic.co/blog/whats-new-elastic-observability-8-12-0#mobile-apm-) based on OpenTelemetry, and more.
As you know, all of Elastic’s out-of-the box solutions are built on one platform — [the Elasticsearch® Platform](https://www.elastic.co/products/). All users, regardless of use case, benefit from [core enhancements](https://www.elastic.co/blog/whats-new-elasticsearch-platform-8-12-0): big advancements to text, vector, and hybrid search — based on our contributions toward scalar quantization and search concurrency, optimization of query parallelization in Elasticsearch® and enhancements to Kibana® including ES|QL query editing in Dashboard.
- Faster and more efficient vector search, based on Apache Lucene 9.9, the [fastest Lucene release ever](https://www.elastic.co/search-labs/blog/articles/apache-lucene-9.9-search-speedups)
- [Scalar quantization of vectors](https://www.elastic.co/blog/whats-new-elasticsearch-platform-8-12-0#scalar-quantization-of-vectors) with a new index options type for vectors: `int8_hnsw`.
- [kNN vector search as a query](https://www.elastic.co/blog/whats-new-elasticsearch-platform-8-12-0#knn-vector-search-as-a-query), instead of a top level element in the search request. This simplifies the syntax for vector search and allows combining vector search with other search mechanisms.
- [Saving the norm at ingest for a more efficient cosine similarity](https://www.elastic.co/blog/whats-new-elasticsearch-platform-8-12-0#saving-the-norm-at-ingest-for-a-more-efficient-cosine-similarity): using cosine becomes just as efficient as when using dot product.
- [FMA instructions for vector search](https://www.elastic.co/blog/whats-new-elasticsearch-platform-8-12-0#fma-instructions-for-vector-search): this improves vector indexing performance and query latency for dot product and cosine similarity. More information about this change is available in our [Vector similarity computations FMA-style](https://www.elastic.co/search-labs/blog/articles/vector-similarity-computations-fma-style) blog.
- [Geo queries in ES|QL](https://www.elastic.co/blog/whats-new-elasticsearch-platform-8-12-0#geo-queries-in-es%7Cql)
- [Geo\_shape runtime field](https://www.elastic.co/blog/whats-new-elasticsearch-platform-8-12-0#geo_shape-runtime-field)
- [Query parallelization](https://www.elastic.co/blog/whats-new-elasticsearch-platform-8-12-0#query-parallelization): after adding vector search parallelization in 8.10, we are now adding similar parallelization for most other queries and aggregations. The impact on aggregations is particularly significant, sometimes cutting the latency to less than a half of what it previously was.
- [Ingest `_simulate` API is now showing all the executed pipelines](https://www.elastic.co/blog/whats-new-elasticsearch-platform-8-12-0#new-pipeline-and-routing-simulation-features), which is helpful in case of usage of the reroute processor.
- [Even more handy access to status of remote searches](https://www.elastic.co/blog/whats-new-elasticsearch-platform-8-12-0#even-more-handy-access-to-status-of-remote-searches): the clusters and shards tab in Kibana’s Inspector introduced in 8.11 benefits from a much quicker and easier way to find the subset that had a particular status, or the status from a particular cluster.
- [Maintenance windows](https://www.elastic.co/blog/whats-new-elasticsearch-platform-8-12-0#maintenance-windows) to reduce alert noise and suppress notifications and [Connector improvements](https://www.elastic.co/blog/whats-new-elasticsearch-platform-8-12-0#connector-improvements) for PagerDuty and ServiceNow ITSM alert actions in Kibana Alerting.
- [Edit ES|QL queries in a dashboard](https://www.elastic.co/blog/whats-new-elasticsearch-platform-8-12-0#edit-es%7Cql-queries-in-a-dashboard): this also allows users to select among different chart suggestions directly from the dashboard.
More details are in the [Elasticsearch platform highlights blog](https://www.elastic.co/blog/whats-new-elasticsearch-platform-8-12-0) or in the [8.12 release notes](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/starting-with-the-elasticsearch-platform-and-its-solutions/8.12/new.html).
# Deploy / Download / Upgrade now!
Elastic 8.12 is [available now on Elastic Cloud](https://cloud.elastic.co/registration) — the only hosted Elasticsearch offering to include all of the new features in this latest release.
New to Elastic? Welcome aboard. You can get started today with a [free 14-day trial of Elastic Cloud](https://cloud.elastic.co/registration). Or, if the [benefits of using a managed service](https://www.elastic.co/cloud) have yet to win you over, you can always [download](https://www.elastic.co/downloads/) a self-managed version of the Elastic Stack for free.
# Release blogs
Learn more with our release blog posts:
> **[Elastic 8.12 includes Elastic AI Assistant for Observability, enhanced ML](https://www.elastic.co/blog/whats-new-elastic-8-12-0)**
>
> Elastic 8.12 includes the GA of the Elastic AI Assistant for Observability, update to Apache Lucene 9.9 with scalar quantization, enhanced machine learning capabilities, CSPM integration for Microsoft...
> **[Elastic Stack 8.12: Enhanced vector search with improvements to ES|QL and more](https://www.elastic.co/blog/whats-new-elasticsearch-platform-8-12-0)**
>
> The 8.12 release includes improved vector data handling with efficient search, query parallelization, enhanced pipeline features, remote search status, new maintenance windows, and ES|QL query editing...
> **[Elastic Search 8.12: Making Lucene fast and developers faster](https://www.elastic.co/blog/whats-new-elastic-search-8-12-0)**
>
> Elasticsearch and Kibana 8.12 deliver the fastest release of Apache Lucene ever, with key innovations built to serve customer use cases. Search developers can utilize and manage ML embeddings with mul...
> **[Elastic Security 8.12 sees upgrades for AI Assistant, CSPM, and more!](https://www.elastic.co/blog/whats-new-elastic-security-8-12-0)**
>
> See what’s new with Elastic Security in 8.12! The AI Assistant for Security offers new alert insights, Azure joins the list of cloud security posture management integrations, SentinelOne kicks off lea...
> **[Elastic Observability 8.12: GA for AI Assistant, SLO, and Mobile APM support](https://www.elastic.co/blog/whats-new-elastic-observability-8-12-0)**
>
> Elastic Observability announces the general availability for SLO and Mobile APM and introduces a knowledge base for the AI Assistant....
---
### Author:  [@dadoonet](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dadoonet)
#### Post date: [January 18, 2024, 9:43am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-s-new-in-elastic-8-12/351339/2 "2024-01-18T09:43:58Z")