Migrating to 9.x from Enterprise Search 8.x versions

Enterprise Search will no longer be available in Elastic version 9.0 and beyond. This guide provides essential resources and migration paths to help you transition from Enterprise Search features to native Elasticsearch capabilities.

The following sections outline specific migration strategies for App Search, Workplace Search, Elastic web crawler and native connectors (aka Elastic managed connectors) to ensure a smooth upgrade experience.

We’ve put together a blog post of Elasticsearch features that you can use to replace and improve App Search functionalities in Elastic 9.0.0 and beyond.

We also created a handy table to compare App Search and Elasticsearch features in the App Search docs, so you can know what to expect.

In our blog post From App Search to Elasticsearch - Tap into the future of search, we outline the benefits of migrating to Elasticsearch including scalability, flexibility, and improved performance. To successfully migrate, developers should start by testing and validating Elasticsearch with a small dataset or single index, using the Elasticsearch API to simplify data transformation, indexing, and query execution.

As App Search will not be available in 9.0 and beyond, to help migrate your data to Elasticsearch, we’ve created an executable App Search migration notebook as a guide. The notebook includes step-by-step instructions, migration scripts, and best practices to ensure a smooth transition.

The notebook includes a description of what takes place under the hood when App Search creates a query to Elasticsearch. You’ll find examples of how to filter data during export, including filtering by a specific field value, date range, or multiple conditions. The notebook also includes an example of how to improve your search results by adding semantic search, a powerful Elasticsearch capability which is unavailable in App Search.

Additionally, to help with migrating any App Search Web Crawlers you have to Open Crawler, we’ve created an executable App Search Crawler to Open Crawler Notebook that can convert your App Search Web Crawler configurations into Open Crawler-compliant YAML files.

Learn more about Open Crawler.

As Workplace Search will not be available in 9.0 and beyond, you must migrate your content and search experiences to Elasticsearch before upgrading. Using Elasticsearch directly gives you access to all the most up-to-date and advanced capabilities developed by Elastic, including AI-powered search. In addition to enabling more customized querying and filtering capabilities, you’ll be able to directly benefit from Elasticsearch’s scalability and performance.

Check out a comparison table between Workplace Search and Elasticsearch features in the Workplace Search documentation. This table will help you understand what to expect when migrating to Elasticsearch.

Workplace Search content sources need to be replaced with self-managed Elastic connectors. These connectors write directly to search-optimized Elasticsearch indices.

Refer to connectors documentation for more information on how to set up and deploy connectors.

After migrating your data to Elasticsearch, you can build custom search experiences using:

Check out the following hands-on examples to get started with the new features:

Because the Elastic Web Crawler is part of Enterprise Search it will no longer be available in 9.0 and beyond. We created the Open Crawler project to replace it. Open Crawler is an open-code, self-managed web crawler that is designed to be more flexible, extensible, and easier to use than the Elastic Web Crawler.

To facilate the migration from Elastic Web Crawler to Open Crawler, we created an executable Python notebook. Use this notebook to convert your Elastic Web Crawler configurations into Open Crawler-compliant YAML files:

Learn more about Open Crawler.

Because Elastic managed connectors (AKA native connectors) are part of Enterprise Search, they will no longer be available in 9.0 and beyond. Before upgrading, you must convert all existing managed connectors to self-managed connectors, which are deployed on your own infrastructure.

We recommend using the Kibana Upgrade Assistant to automatically identify and convert Elastic managed connectors. This lossless process preserves all configurations, schedules, and sync histories. Find the Upgrade Assistant in the Kibana UI using the global search bar.

You can also manually convert connectors through the Connector UI by clicking "Self-manage this connector" in the connector configuration page.

After conversion, deploy these connectors on your own infrastructure. For detailed instructions, refer to the connectors documentation.

Elastic tools download pages:

FAQ webpage: