Charmed OpenSearch enters general availability

September 25, 2024: Today, Canonical announced the release of Charmed OpenSearch, an enterprise solution for OpenSearch® with advanced automation features, multi-cloud capabilities, and comprehensive support. 

OpenSearch is an open source search and analytics suite that developers use to build solutions for search, observability, security analytics, generative AI projects, and more. Charmed OpenSearch builds on this foundation with additional enterprise-grade capabilities that can help you spend less time on operational tasks and more time on high-value data and analytics projects.

Powerful open source search engine and analytics suite

OpenSearch is Apache 2.0 licensed software, and is run, maintained and advanced by the community. OpenSearch includes a network of partners and is open to contribution. The organization believes that great open source software is built together with a diverse community of contributors. Canonical, the publisher of Ubuntu, has been a long-time supporter of OpenSearch since 2021 and is now a general member of the OpenSearch Software Foundation under the Linux Foundation. The mission of the OpenSearch Software Foundation is to provide infrastructure and other resources to enable the long-term sustainability of the OpenSearch open source project and the OpenSearch ecosystem. 

“OpenSearch continues to see widespread adoption from companies of all sizes and across industries,” Carl Meadows, Director of Product for OpenSearch at AWS and Chair of the OpenSearch Software Foundation Governing Board. “We’re excited to see Canonical release their new OpenSearch offering because it reinforces our commitment to providing a secure, high-quality, open source search and analytics suite that any company can freely build on top of and make their own. This project will put OpenSearch in the hands of even more businesses and developers.”

OpenSearch^® with advanced automation, available on any cloud

Charmed OpenSearch builds on the OpenSearch upstream version 2.17.0 by integrating automation to streamline production clusters’ deployment, management, and orchestration. The operator enhances efficiency, consistency, and security. Its rich features include high availability, seamless scaling features for deployments of all sizes, both http and data-in-transit encryption,  multi-cloud support, safe upgrades without downtime, roles and plugin management and data visualization through Charmed OpenSearch Dashboards. Charmed OpenSearch provides a comprehensive solution that simplifies complex operations, supports scalable infrastructure, and ensures high performance and security. 

With the Charmed OpenSearch operator, you can deploy and run OpenSearch on physical and virtual machines (VM) and other cloud and cloud-like environments, including AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, OpenStack, and VMware.

Hardware acceleration

Intel and Canonical have worked together to optimize OpenSearch for Intel machines, specifically Intel AVX, AMX, and QAT. Intel AVX acts as a powerful hardware accelerator for vector operations.  Charmed OpenSearch is well suited for use cases like Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), which can take advantage of Intel-related hardware accelerators. 

“Intel’s 4th Generation Xeon processors, equipped with built-in accelerators such as QAT, AVX, and AMX, provide a robust platform for databases like Charmed OpenSearch, essential for RAG pipelines in LLMs. These processors have demonstrated significant performance gains utilizing Intel’s AVX extension; our collaboration with Canonical has shown up to a 34% improvement in vector search index build time with AVX512 enabled. While these results are impressive, our 5th and 6th Generation Intel Xeon processors aim to deliver even greater performance for Charmed OpenSearch and related workloads. With their advanced capabilities, the latest Intel Xeon processors are an excellent choice for running RAG architectures.” – Bill Pearson, Vice President of Software Solutions and Ecosystem of the Data Center and AI Group at Intel.

Simple pricing per node

Charmed OpenSearch is part of Canonical’s data and AI portfolio. Customers can purchase 24/7 or weekday enterprise support on a per-node basis through the Ubuntu Pro + Support plan, which covers all applications within the portfolio, including Charmed PostgreSQL, Charmed MongoDB, Charmed Kafka , Charmed Spark, Charmed Kubeflow and Charmed MLFlow.

This convenient subscription per node and lack of software license fees make Canonical’s offering compelling for organizations looking to run application solutions like OpenSearch with more control over their TCO. For example, customers using Charmed Kubeflow or Charmed MLFlow could use Charmed OpenSearch for LLM use cases such as RAG at no additional cost. Budgeting and financial planning are straightforward and predictable. 

Secured and supported for 10 years

For organizations looking for fast security patching against Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs), Canonical’s Charmed OpenSearch offers comprehensive security maintenance. Its cost-effective subscription model includes 10 years of security maintenance and 24/7 support, providing the stability and peace of mind necessary for organizations to run OpenSearch in production. 

“Charmed OpenSearch reflects our commitment to delivering LTS, enterprise-grade, and cost-effective open source solutions in the data space. Our solid collaboration with the vibrant OpenSearch community ensures continuous improvement and innovation, making it a powerful enterprise solution,” said Cedric Gegout, VP Product Management at Canonical. “As part of our data solution portfolio, Charmed OpenSearch features built-in security updates, robust automation, and multi-cloud capabilities, helping organizations reduce deployment and maintenance efforts.”

Managed solutions 

Delivering data and analytics projects at scale in production can be incredibly challenging. Canonical’s managed services for OpenSearch efficiently scale, ensuring that your service remains stable and cost-effective as your business expands. Canonical’s Managed OpenSearch service gives you automation, enterprise-grade security, scalability, availability, monitoring, and support from trusted experts. This allows you to free up time to concentrate on building applications and business development instead of maintaining your search and analytics suite.

Get started with Charmed OpenSearch

To get started with Charmed OpenSearch, refer to the documentation available in Charmhub for Charmed OpenSearch and Charmed OpenSearch Dashboards. For more information, visit https://canonical.com/data/opensearch. 

About Canonical

Canonical, the publisher of Ubuntu, provides open source security, support and services. Our portfolio covers critical systems, from the smallest devices to the largest clouds, from the kernel to containers, from databases to AI. With customers that include top tech brands, emerging startups, governments and home users, Canonical delivers trusted open source for everyone. 

Learn more at https://canonical.com/ 

Additional resources

• Getting started with OpenSearch and OpenSearch Dashboards webinar
• What is OpenSearch
• Managed OpenSearch 
• OpenSearch Support

OpenSearch is a Copyright © Contributors to the OpenSearch Project, which has been established as OpenSearch Project a Series of LF Projects, LLC. OpenSearch Trademark Policy