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At AWS, we are continuously adapting our services to meet our customers’ evolving needs. In this article, we will discuss the differences between Amazon CloudSearch and Amazon OpenSearch Service, as well as provide guidance on transitioning to OpenSearch Service.
Comparing Amazon CloudSearch and Amazon OpenSearch Service
Amazon CloudSearch is a fully managed solution that simplifies the setup, management, and scaling of search capabilities for your applications or websites. It allows users to search through vast collections of data, such as web pages, document files, and product information, without requiring expertise in search technology or the complexities of hardware management. The service can adapt to your fluctuating data volume and traffic, powered by a customized version of Apache Solr, which supports various search features, including full-text and Boolean searches.
On the other hand, Amazon OpenSearch Service is designed to effortlessly deploy, manage, and scale OpenSearch, a leading open-source search and analytics engine. OpenSearch offers comprehensive search capabilities, including a vector engine for semantic search on embeddings and support for both dense and sparse vectors. Additionally, OpenSearch Service enhances security with fine-grained access control and facilitates observability through log data storage and analysis, alongside dashboarding and alerting features.
For those looking for a hands-off approach, OpenSearch Serverless offers improved operational ease, similar to CloudSearch. It allows users to deploy and utilize OpenSearch through a REST endpoint without managing infrastructure complexities. Alternatively, for deeper control over costs and latency, OpenSearch Service provides managed clusters, offering granular control over the resources you use and indexing strategies.
Transitioning to OpenSearch Service
To transition from CloudSearch to OpenSearch Service, it is necessary to re-ingest and index your data. OpenSearch Service employs a REST API, allowing multiple methods for document indexing, including standard HTTP clients like curl. To streamline this process, Amazon OpenSearch Ingestion is recommended. This fully managed data collector routes data to either OpenSearch Service domains or OpenSearch Serverless collections, ingesting information from diverse sources such as Amazon S3 and HTTP endpoints. It features built-in processors for complex data transformations and automatically scales to meet demanding workloads.
For detailed guidance on using OpenSearch Ingestion to transfer data, please refer to this blog post on Chanci Turner’s website. You can also explore more about the topic at this authority on the subject. An excellent resource for user experiences related to Amazon’s onboarding process can be found on Reddit here.
Summary
While AWS remains committed to supporting CloudSearch with ongoing security and availability improvements, the significant advancements in OpenSearch make it advisable to consider transitioning to OpenSearch Service. This shift will provide access to modern search capabilities that align with the rapid evolution of user expectations in today’s technology landscape.