What is OpenSearch

OpenSearch is an open source search and analytics suite originally derived from Elasticsearch. Originally supported by Amazon Web Services (AWS), it transitioned to the Linux Foundation in late 2024.

OpenSearch is an open source tool and is offered free of charge. However, there are several managed services available that can help organizations deploy and manage OpenSearch. We’ll provide more details and pricing for two of these services: AWS OpenSearch and Instaclustr Managed OpenSearch.

OpenSearch offers tools for data exploration, ingestion, visualization, and real-time analytics, efficiently addressing the needs of businesses handling large volumes of data. It supports various data formats and provides flexibility in data handling, making it suitable for applications from business intelligence to log analytics. Its extensible nature allows users to customize functionality through plugins.

Transition of OpenSearch to the Linux Foundation

In September 2024, AWS officially transferred governance of the OpenSearch project to the Linux Foundation. This transition led to the creation of the OpenSearch Software Foundation, a new, community-driven initiative.

This move helps ensure vendor-neutral governance, meaning no single entity controls the project, fostering greater community participation. By joining the Linux Foundation, OpenSearch gains access to broader resources and support for its long-term sustainability. This is expected to accelerate the platform’s growth.

The OSSF brings together notable members like NetApp Instaclustr, AWS, SAP, Uber and others, and allows contributors from various organizations to participate in shaping the platform’s future.

Why run OpenSearch with a managed service?

Running OpenSearch with a managed service offers several advantages that simplify operations and enhance performance:

  • Reduced operational overhead: Managed services handle tasks like software updates, patches, and security management, freeing up teams from time-consuming maintenance activities.
  • Scalability: Managed services automatically scale resources up or down based on demand, ensuring high performance even as data volumes grow, without the need for manual intervention.
  • High availability: These services ensure system reliability by offering built-in redundancy and failover mechanisms to minimize downtime.
  • Cost efficiency: Organizations only pay for the resources they use, avoiding upfront costs for hardware and the expenses associated with over-provisioning.
  • Expert support: Managed services often come with access to expert support, helping troubleshoot issues and optimize performance quickly.
  • Security and compliance: Providers ensure compliance with security standards and regulations, managing encryption, data backups, and monitoring for security threats.
  • Faster setup and time-to-market: Because infrastructure is pre-configured, managed services allow for quicker deployment. This reduces setup time and makes time-to-market for new projects much faster.

Related content: Read our guide to OpenSearch architecture

Pricing for OpenSearch managed services

Let’s compare pricing for two managed services that can help organizations deploy and manage OpenSearch: AWS OpenSearch and Instaclustr Managed OpenSearch.

Amazon OpenSearch Service pricing

Amazon OpenSearch Service is a managed service that deploys, operates, and scales OpenSearch clusters in the AWS Cloud. It offers high availability, built-in security, and automatic scaling, making it suitable for various use cases including log analytics, full-text search, and operational monitoring.

AWS provides integrations with other AWS services such as CloudWatch, VPC, and S3, enhancing data ingestion, storage, and monitoring capabilities. With support for Elasticsearch APIs, Amazon OpenSearch Service enables users to migrate existing Elasticsearch workloads.

Free tier

The Amazon OpenSearch Service offers a free tier that allows new users to explore its capabilities at no cost. Under the free tier, customers can use up to 750 hours per month of t2.small.search or t3.small.search instances, which are suitable for smaller, non-production workloads.

Additionally, the free tier includes 10 GB of optional Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) storage each month. However, if usage exceeds these limits, customers will be charged based on the standard rates for the additional resources utilized.

On-demand instance pricing

On-demand pricing for Amazon OpenSearch Service varies depending on the instance type and configuration. Prices range from $0.018 per hour for t2.micro.search instances with 1 vCPU and 1 GiB of memory, up to $4.335 per hour for m7g.16xlarge.search instances, which offer 64 vCPUs and 256 GiB of memory.

Each instance type is optimized for different workloads, allowing users to choose based on their performance and capacity needs. EBS storage is available for all instances. Pricing is based solely on the instance runtime and does not include additional costs for storage, data transfer, or optional features like snapshots.

Reserved instance pricing

Reserved instance (RI) pricing for Amazon OpenSearch Service offers significant savings compared to on-demand pricing. Customers can commit to a 1- or 3-year term for reserved instances, with options to pay upfront, partially upfront, or no upfront payment at all. These plans provide discounts of up to 31% over the on-demand rates, depending on the instance type and payment option.

For example:

  • A t3.medium.search instance costs $43.80 per month under a reserved plan, translating to an effective hourly rate of $0.060, providing an 18% savings over the on-demand rate of $0.073.
  • Larger instances, such as the m7g.16xlarge.search, have an RI monthly fee of $2,183.43, with an effective hourly rate of $2.991, saving 31% compared to the on-demand rate of $4.335.

Amazon OpenSearch Serverless pricing

Amazon OpenSearch Serverless charges based on two main components: compute and storage. Compute capacity is measured in OpenSearch Compute Units (OCUs), and pricing depends on the workload for both indexing and query functions. Each OCU includes 6 GB of RAM and corresponds directly to CPU usage. The cost for OCUs is billed per hour and is charged separately for search/query operations and indexing operations.

In addition, Amazon OpenSearch Serverless offers data storage using Amazon S3, which is billed based on usage. For users looking to optimize costs, there is an option to pause collections when they are not in use. Collections can be configured to automatically adjust the minimum number of OCUs, offering users fine-grained control over cost management.

As of the latest pricing model, OpenSearch Compute Unit (OCU) costs are $0.24 per OCU per hour for both indexing and search/query operations. There is also a nominal charge of $0.024 per GB per month for managed storage.

Instaclustr Managed OpenSearch

Instaclustr Managed OpenSearch offers fully managed OpenSearch clusters across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, along with on-premises deployment options. Designed for reliability, Instaclustr provides features like automated backups, monitoring, and expert support, allowing organizations to focus on analytics rather than infrastructure.

Instaclustr’s managed service is built for performance optimization, supporting both small-scale and enterprise workloads with dedicated security options including private networking and SOC 2 compliance. This service is ideal for companies looking for high availability, detailed performance insights, and customizable configurations in managing OpenSearch at scale.

Pricing for AWS

Instaclustr supports various node types on AWS, including cost-efficient Graviton2 nodes with GP3 volumes, which reduce costs by approximately 20% compared to traditional x86 nodes. Users can also choose private network clusters for enhanced security.

For example:

  • A SRH-DI-DEV-t4g.small-5 instance costs $47.36 per node per month or $142.08 per cluster per month, offering 5 GiB storage capacity, 2 GiB memory, and 2 CPU cores.
  • The larger SRH-PRD-r6g.large-1600 instance costs $840.75 per node per month or $2522.25 per cluster per month, offering 1600 GiB storage capacity, 16 GiB memory, and 2 CPU cores.

Pricing for Azure

Instaclustr offers optimized instances like the ESv4 node family for OpenSearch on Azure, which is better suited for demanding workloads. Developer node types are also available at a lower cost for testing and evaluation purposes.

For example:

  • A SRH-DEV-DS1_v2-5-an instance costs $72.33 per node per month or $216.99 per cluster per month, offering 5 GiB storage capacity, 3.5 GiB memory, and 1 CPU core.
  • The larger SRH-PRD-E2s_v4-1600-an instance costs $887.80 per node per month or $2663.40 per cluster per month, offering 1600 GiB storage capacity, 16 GiB memory, and 2 CPU cores.

Pricing for Google Cloud

Google Cloud customers can take advantage of the n2-highmem family of instances, providing flexibility in both storage and performance depending on workload requirements.

For example:

  • A SRH-DM-DEV-n1-standard-1-30 instance costs $97.62 per node per month or $292.86 per cluster per month, offering 30 GiB storage capacity, 3.75 GiB memory, and 1 CPU core.
  • The larger SRH-PRD-n2-highmem-2-1600 instance costs $988.11 per node per month or $2964.33 per cluster per month, offering 1600 GiB storage capacity, 16 GiB memory, and 2 CPU cores.

Pricing on-premises deployment

Instaclustr provides fully managed OpenSearch on-premises, ensuring enterprise-grade features such as 99.999% availability, SOC 2 compliance, and scalable configurations. For pricing details, contact sales.

Best practices for optimizing OpenSearch costs

Here are some of the ways that organizations can ensure the most cost effective use of OpenSearch.

Minimize inter-node communication

Strategies for reducing unnecessary data exchange include optimizing the cluster architecture to ensure nodes are strategically located and data routing is efficient. This has a direct impact on reducing latency and ensuring that communication costs remain low.

Efficient sharding and indexing can also play a vital role, which ensures balanced data distribution and minimizes inter-node traffic. Clusters can be configured to prioritize data locality, effectively lowering inter-node overheads.

Use OpenSearch Curator

OpenSearch Curator aids in managing indices lifecycle to cut storage costs. By automating the process of deleting outdated indices or shifting them to cheaper storage options like UltraWarm, users can optimize storage expenses. Implementing Curator schedules ensures that only necessary data occupy valuable high-cost storage. This tactic caters to environments with dynamic data needs.

Automating index management lessens manual intervention, reducing human error and freeing resources for more strategic functions. Curator’s ability to migrate data between different types of storage also offers a significant cost-saving solution for businesses managing large-scale datasets.

Use OpenSearch Rollups

OpenSearch Rollups are useful for aggregating historical data, reducing the data volume and subsequent storage costs in OpenSearch. Rollups consolidate and summarize data, allowing users to maintain useful historical insights without retaining extensive raw data. This saves on storage costs and optimizes query performance since smaller datasets equate to faster processing times.

Applying rollups minimizes the data stored in high-performance tiers, transferring aggregated data to more cost-effective storage solutions like UltraWarm or cold storage. Organizations can balance between cost savings and data access needs, ensuring they are only paying to keep the most relevant insights.

Consider third-party OpenSearch plugins

Leveraging third-party plugins can enhance OpenSearch functionality while controlling costs. These plugins often introduce capabilities not natively available in OpenSearch, such as advanced visualization tools or data connectors.

However, thoughtful selection of plugins ensures they align with both technical requirements and budgetary limits. Organizations need to evaluate the cost-benefit ratio of each plugin to ensure enhanced capabilities lead to measurable value over time. Third-party plugins can help create efficient workflows by minimizing operational overhead. They can integrate with existing OpenSearch instances, offering additional features.

Empowering organizations with comprehensive support for OpenSearch

At Instaclustr, our mission is to empower organizations with the most comprehensive support for OpenSearch. We believe that successful implementation of this open-source search and analytics engine lies at the intersection of world-class managed services and expert assistance.

  • Managed services: We take over the management of your OpenSearch clusters’ underlying infrastructure to ensure high availability, scalability, and security. This means that you can dedicate your resources to your core business objectives instead of infrastructure management.
  • Expert assistance: From cluster configuration to performance tuning, our team of experienced engineers is ready to help. We are well-versed in OpenSearch and can provide valuable insights and recommendations to optimize your clusters, whether it’s fine-tuning query performance, optimizing index settings, or resolving stability problems.
  • 24/7 monitoring and support: With round-the-clock monitoring and support, we detect and address any potential issues promptly, minimizing downtime and ensuring smooth operation of your OpenSearch clusters.

No two use cases are ever the same. That’s why we created the ROI Calculator to figure out how much you can reduce your costs with the Instaclustr Managed Platform based on your setup. Enter the inputs of how you use your data and get your free, customized report. Try it out and see how much you could save with a managed service.

Experience the Instaclustr difference today. Schedule a free consultation with our OpenSearch experts and let us help you optimize your OpenSearch environment.

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