Installing Liferay Enterprise Search

This document has been updated and ported to Liferay Learn and is no longer maintained here.

A Liferay Enterprise Search (LES) subscription gets you additional features beyond what’s available out of the box with your Liferay DXP subscription. It includes

• Liferay Enterprise Search Security*
• Liferay Enterprise Search Monitoring
• Liferay Enterprise Search Learning to Rank

* A LES subscription is not necessary if using Elasticsearch 7 via the _Liferay Connector to Elasticsearch 7_as X-Pack’s security features are bundled. See the LES compatibility matrix for more information.

X-Pack is an Elasticsearch extension for securing and monitoring Elasticsearch clusters. If you use Elasticsearch, you should secure it with X-Pack. The security features of X-Pack include authenticating access to the Elasticsearch cluster’s data and encrypting Elasticsearch’s internal and external communications. These are necessary security features for most production systems. A LES subscription gets you access to two connectors if you’re using Elasticsearch 6: monitoring and security. Elasticsearch 7 bundles these security features, and Liferay has followed suit. Therefore, security is bundled with the Liferay Connector to Elasticsearch 7, and no LES subscription is necessary. Because of this, the documentation for installing Liferay Enterprise Search Security on Liferay DXP has been moved from the LES documentation section (this section) to the Elasticsearch installation and configuration guide. Contact Liferay’s Sales department for more information.

Here’s an overview of using the LES applications with Liferay DXP:

1. Get an Enterprise Search subscription.

2. You’ll receive a license for X-Pack monitoring. Install it on your Elasticsearch servers.

   Note: If using Elasticsearch 6, you’ll also need a LES subscription for X-Pack security.

3. Download and install the Liferay Enterprise Search apps you purchased. Find them in the Help Center Downloads page, choosing Enterprise Search from the Product drop-down menu.

4. Configure the connectors with the proper credentials, encryption information, and settings.

5. Restart Elasticsearch. These steps require a full cluster restart.

More detailed installation instructions are available in the article for each LES feature.

Elastic’s documentation explains additional configuration options, features, and the architecture of X-Pack.

Note: Out of the box, X-Pack comes with a 30-day trial. This can be useful if there’s a delay between your subscription and receipt of your production X-Pack license.

Now configure security, monitoring, and/or Learning to Rank, depending on your needs.