Amazon OpenSearch Service announces Standard and Extended Support dates for Elasticsearch and OpenSearch versions

Amazon OpenSearch Service supports 19 versions of Elasticsearch opensource, and 11 versions of OpenSearch. Over the years, we have added several stability, resiliency, and security features to recent engine versions, helping customers derive better value from OpenSearch Service. As software versions grow older, we need to make sure that these versions continue to meet high security and compliance standards. Many of the legacy versions supported on OpenSearch Service, such as Elasticsearch versions 1.5 and 2.3, depend on third-party dependencies that are no longer actively supported. By moving to the latest engine versions, customers can derive maximum benefit from the new features, improved price-performance, and security improvements we make to OpenSearch.

Today, we’re announcing timelines for end of Standard Support and Extended Support for legacy Elasticsearch versions up to 6.7, Elasticsearch versions 7.1 through 7.8, OpenSearch versions from 1.0 through 1.2, and OpenSearch versions 2.3 through 2.9 available on Amazon OpenSearch Service. Versions that are under Standard Support receive regular bug fixes and security fixes, and versions in Extended Support receive critical security fixes and operating system patches for an additional flat fee per normalized instance hour. With Extended Support, we want to make sure that our customers continue to receive critical security fixes for an adequate time, while they plan to upgrade to more recent engine versions. For more details on Extended Support please see the FAQs.

End of Standard Support and Extended Support for Elasticsearch versions

See Table 1 that follows for end of Standard Support and Extended Support dates for legacy Elasticsearch versions available on OpenSearch Service. We recommend that customers running Elasticsearch versions upgrade to the latest OpenSearch versions. All Elasticsearch versions will receive at least 12 months of Extended Support, and version 5.6 will receive 36 months of Extended Support. After Extended Support ends for a version, domains running the specific version will not receive bug fixes or security updates.

End of Standard Support and Extended Support for OpenSearch versions

For OpenSearch versions running on Amazon OpenSearch Service, we will provide at least 12 months of Standard Support after the end of support date for the corresponding upstream open source OpenSearch version, or 12 months of Standard Support after the release of the next minor version on OpenSearch Service, whichever is longer. All OpenSearch versions will receive at least 12 months of Extended Support after the end of Standard Support date. For more details, check the open source OpenSearch maintenance policy.

See Table 2 that follows for end of Standard Support and Extended Support dates for various OpenSearch versions available on OpenSearch Service. For future updates on versions in Standard Support and Extended Support, follow supported versions.

Upgrading OpenSearch Service domains: We recommend that you update your domains to the latest available OpenSearch version to derive maximum value out of OpenSearch Service. Minor version upgrades on OpenSearch tend to be seamless because they don’t contain breaking changes, and we recommend moving to the latest minor version, or a version for which end of support has not yet been announced. For example, if you are on OpenSearch version 1.2, you can move to OpenSearch version 1.3, because it’s the last minor version of the 1.x series and because presently it continues to be supported by the open source community and AWS. If you want to choose an Elasticsearch version, and you are running an older 6.x or 7.x version, you can move to version 6.8, or 7.10.

There are various ways to upgrade your cluster to a newer version, and the steps vary depending on the version your domain is running and the version you want to upgrade to. See Upgrading OpenSearch Service domains for detailed instructions on upgrading your domain to a new version. You can also use the Migration Assistant for Amazon OpenSearch Service for upgrading to newer versions

Calculating Extended Support charges: Domains running versions under Extended Support will be charged a flat additional fee per normalized instance hour (NIH). For example, $0.0065 per NIH in the US East (North Virginia) AWS Region. See the pricing page for exact pricing by Region.

NIH is computed as a factor of the instance size (for example, medium or large), and the number of instance hours. For example, if you’re running an m7g.medium.search instance for 24 hours in the US EAST (North Virginia) Region, which is priced at $0.068 per instance hour (on-demand), you will typically pay $1.632 ($0.068×24). If you’re running a version that is in Extended Support, you will pay an additional $0.0065 per NIH, which is computed as $0.0065 x 24 (number of instance hours) x 2 (size normalization factor, which is 2 for medium-sized instances), which comes to $0.312 for Extended Support for 24 hours. The total amount that you will pay for 24 hours will be a sum of the standard instance usage cost and the Extended Support cost, which is $1.944 ($1.632+$0.312, excluding storage cost). The following table shows the normalization factor for various instance sizes in OpenSearch Service.

Summary

We add new capabilities across various vectors to the latest OpenSearch versions, which include new features, performance and resiliency improvements, and security improvements. We recommend that you update to recent OpenSearch versions to get the most benefit out of OpenSearch Service. For any questions on Standard and Extended Support options, see the FAQs. For further questions, contact AWS Support.

About the authors

Arvind Mahesh is a Senior Manager-Product at Amazon Web Services for Amazon OpenSearch Service. He has close to two decades of technology experience across a variety of domains such as Analytics, Search, Cloud, Network Security, and Telecom.

Kuldeep Yadav is a Senior Technical Program Manager at Amazon Web Services who is passionate about driving innovation and complex problem solving. He works closely with teams and customers in ensuring operational excellence and achieving more with less. Outside of work he enjoys trekking and all sports

Jon Handler is a Senior Principal Solutions Architect at Amazon Web Services based in Palo Alto, CA. Jon works closely with OpenSearch and Amazon OpenSearch Service, providing help and guidance to a broad range of customers who have search and log analytics workloads that they want to move to the AWS Cloud. Prior to joining AWS, Jon’s career as a software developer included 4 years of coding a large-scale, ecommerce search engine. Jon holds a Bachelor of the Arts from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Master of Science and a PhD in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence from Northwestern University.