Search at Intercom: Building our Elasticsearch cloud on AWS

In Intercom, shipping is the company's heartbeat, and running less software is a key principle. However, when building search functionalities, they had to make an exception by running their Elasticsearch cloud on AWS. They focused on three areas: applying security patches, performing software upgrades, and replacing failed EC2 instances. To achieve this, they utilized Chef for node-level automated lifecycle management and AWS Systems Manager (SSM) for cluster-wide workflows. SSM provided advantages such as automated maintenance windows and flexible instance discovery. The system is integrated with Datadog and Slack to provide operational visibility. By thoughtfully accepting the cost of this exception and iterating on it, Intercom was able to bring their Elasticsearch service back in line with their principles, achieving massive time savings and cost savings while maintaining flexibility.

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