You can use the new OR1 instances to create Amazon OpenSearch Service clusters that use Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) for primary storage. You can ingest, store, index, and access just about any imaginable amount of data, while also enjoying a 30% price/performance improvement over existing instance types, eleven nines of data durability, and a zero-time Recovery Point Objective (RPO). You can use this to perform interactive log analytics, monitor application in real time, and more.
New OR1 Instances
These benefits are all made possible by the new OR1 instances, which are available in eight sizes and used for the data nodes of the cluster:
| Instance Name | vCPUs |
Memory |
EBS Storage Max (gp3) |
| or1.medium.search | 1 | 8 GiB | 400 GiB |
| or1.large.search | 2 | 16 GiB | 800 GiB |
| or1.xlarge.search | 4 | 32 GiB | 1.5 TiB |
| or1.2xlarge.search | 8 | 64 GiB | 3 TiB |
| or1.4xlarge.search | 16 | 128 GiB | 6 TiB |
| or1.8xlarge.search | 32 | 256 GiB | 12 TiB |
| or1.12xlarge.search | 48 | 384 GiB | 18 TiB |
| or1.16xlarge.search | 64 | 512 GiB | 24 TiB |
To choose a suitable instance size, read Sizing Amazon OpenSearch Service domains.
The Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volumes are used for primary storage, with data copied synchronously to S3 as it arrives. The data in S3 is used to create replicas and to rehydrate EBS after shards are moved between instances as a result of a node failure or a routine rebalancing operation. This is made possible by the remote-backed storage and segment replication features that were recently released for OpenSearch.
Creating a Domain
To create a domain I open the Amazon OpenSearch Service Console, select Managed clusters, and click Create domain:
I enter a name for my domain (my-domain), select Standard create, and use the Production template:
Then I choose the Domain with standby deployment option. This option will create active data nodes in two Availability Zones and a standby one in a third. I also choose the latest engine version:
Then I select the OR1 instance family and (for my use case) configure 500 GiB of EBS storage per data node:
I set the other settings as needed, and click Create to proceed:
I take a quick lunch break and when i come back my domain is ready:
Things to Know
Here are a couple of things to know about this new storage option:
Engine Versions – Amazon OpenSearch Service engines version 2.11 and above support OR1 instances.
Regions – The OR1 instance family is available for use with OpenSearch in the US East (Ohio, N. Virginia), US West (N. California, Oregon), Asia Pacific (Mumbai, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo), and Europe (Frankfurt, Ireland, Spain, Stockholm) AWS Regions.
Pricing – You pay On-Demand or Reserved prices for data nodes, and you also pay for EBS storage. See the Amazon OpenSearch Service Pricing page for more information.
— Jeff;
