Announcing OpenSearch 2.18 on the Instaclustr Managed Platform

NetApp is excited to announce that OpenSearch 2.18 is now generally available on the Instaclustr Managed Platform. This new version brings a slew of fantastic new updates to OpenSearch. So join us as we explore OpenSearch 2.18.

Performance improvements

• Parallel ingestion: Allows you to process documents in batches, enabling quicker document processing for large ingestion workloads.
• Advanced search improvements: OpenSearch now supports Single-Instruction, Multiple Data (SIMD) for exact searches, improving exact search query performance significantly.
• Range aggregation improvements: range aggregation queries have been optimised, leading to significant speed improvements.

Storage capacity and efficiency

• Vector search storage optimisations: Vector search has been optimised, leading to more efficient disk usage, and lower costs.
• Byte vector encoding: Accelerate performance and reduce memory usage with byte vector encoding for users of the k-NN plugin.

Search queries

• Wildcard fields: Introduces a new wildcard field that significantly improves data querying capabilities for large strings of data.
• Derived fields: For scenarios requiring real-time data transformation, derived fields allow you to create new fields dynamically by executing scripts on existing fields.
• Rerank results by field: The “rerank results” function allows you to re-order search results based on various variables in your documents. This update allows you to rerank based on “field”, a highly requested feature.

Development tools

• Configuration templates: Introduces application-based configuration templates, simplifying the setup of new use cases like text and image search, observability, and log analytics. These templates enhance the index template functionality, making it easier to optimize indexes for performance and usability through Index State Management (ISM).
• Cluster statistics optimisations: The cluster statistics API now supports pagination, making it much easier and more efficient to troubleshoot cluster issues.

For the full list of new features, enhancements and optimisations, see the OpenSearch release notes.

We are also pleased to announce the release of OpenSearch 1.3.19, for our customers using 1.x for their OpenSearch clusters. The full list of updates can be found in the OpenSearch 1.3.19 release notes.

As per our lifecycle policy, our previous General Availability versions (2.15 and 1.3.17) will be moved to deprecated. For optimal security and performance, we recommend our new General Availability versions (1.3.19 and 2.18) for all new deployments. For all existing customers using earlier versions, our technical operations team will contact you soon to arrange an upgrade. Existing NetApp Instaclustr customers can contact us at [email protected].

As always, if you have any questions about these new versions or OpenSearch in general, drop us a line. Or you’d rather see for yourself, why not spin up a trial OpenSearch cluster on the Instaclustr Managed Platform? It’s quick, easy and free!