Elasticsearch 5.1.1, based on Lucene 6.3.0, has been released and is available for deployment on Elastic Cloud, addressing several enhancements and fixes from its predecessor, 5.1.0, which was skipped due to unreleased binaries mistakenly labeled under that version. Key updates include improvements in search functionalities, such as the introduction of the all_fields mode in queries, which advances towards eliminating the need for the _all field and optimizations in term queries to enhance performance and reduce garbage collection. Painless scripting has been improved with features like null-safe operators and negative offset addressing in arrays, while DNS lookups are now performed lazily and in parallel, bolstering reliability and flexibility. These enhancements aim to improve user experience, and users are encouraged to provide feedback through social media and GitHub.