Amazon OpenSearch

Question 1

What is Amazon OpenSearch Service?

Answer 1

A fully managed service that makes it easy to deploy, operate, and scale OpenSearch clusters in the AWS Cloud. OpenSearch is a powerful open-source search and analytics engine.

Question 2

What are some common use cases for OpenSearch?

Answer 2

• Log analytics
• Full-text search
• Security analytics
• Application monitoring
• Clickstream analytics

Question 3

Name the core components of OpenSearch.

Answer 3

• Documents: The data you index and search, represented in JSON format.
• Types: (Deprecated in later versions) Used to define schemas for documents.
• Indices: Collections of documents and their associated types.
• Shards: Subdivisions of an index for distributing data across nodes.

Question 4

How does OpenSearch provide redundancy and high availability?

Answer 4

Through replication. Each shard can have one or more replicas. If a shard fails, a replica takes over.

Question 5

What are the different storage tiers available in Amazon OpenSearch Service?

Answer 5

• Hot storage: Fastest, best for frequently accessed data. Backed by instance storage or EBS volumes.
• UltraWarm storage: Cost-effective for less frequently accessed data, uses S3 with caching.
• Cold storage: Cheapest, for infrequent access and long-term retention, uses S3.

Question 6

What is the purpose of Index State Management (ISM)?

Answer 6

Automates common index management tasks:
* Deleting old indices
* Changing replica count
* Moving indices to different storage tiers
* Taking snapshots

Question 7

What are index rollups?

Answer 7

A way to summarize and reduce the size of older data by creating new, smaller indices with aggregated information.

Question 8

What is cross-cluster replication used for?

Answer 8

Replicating indices across OpenSearch domains for:
* High availability in case of outages
* Geographic redundancy
* Lower latency for users in different regions

Question 9

How can you improve the stability of your OpenSearch cluster?

Answer 9

• Use 3 dedicated master nodes to avoid split-brain situations.
• Monitor disk space usage closely to prevent running out of storage.
• Choose the appropriate number of shards based on data volume and desired shard size.

Question 10

What are some security features offered by Amazon OpenSearch Service?

Answer 10

• Resource-based policies
• Identity-based policies (IAM integration)
• IP-based access control
• Encryption at rest and in transit
• VPC support
• Integration with Cognito for user authentication

Question 11

What are some anti-patterns to avoid when using OpenSearch?

Answer 11

• Don’t use OpenSearch for OLTP workloads (it’s not a database).
• Avoid using it for ad-hoc data querying (tools like Athena are better suited).
• Remember that OpenSearch is optimized for search and analytics.

Question 12

What is Amazon OpenSearch Serverless?

Answer 12

A serverless option for OpenSearch that provides:
* On-demand autoscaling
* Encryption with your own KMS keys
* Simplified data management with collections

Question 13

What are the key benefits of using OpenSearch Serverless?

Answer 13

• Eliminates the need to manage infrastructure.
• Scales automatically based on workload demands.
• Offers pay-as-you-go pricing.
• Enhances security with automatic encryption.

Question 14

What are OpenSearch Compute Units (OCUS)?

Answer 14

The unit of measure for capacity in OpenSearch Serverless. You can set limits on the OCUs used by your collections.