Running OpenSearch locally on Windows 10/11

Important Links:

1. OpenSearch Documentation

The reason I am writing this article even though the process of running OpenSearch is quite straightforward using docker-compose is because Docker Desktop on Windows is configured to use WSL2 backend by default.

The problem with WSL2 backend is you do not get the Settings->Advanced option in the settings menu for Docker Desktop and hence you cannot change the default RAM usage by Docker Desktop more than 2GB(OpenSearch requires at least 4). So when you run docker compose up, it will fail.

Steps to run OpenSearch on Windows 10/11

1. Go to this link, https://opensearch.org/versions/opensearch-1-3-2.html , and download the docker-compose.yaml file.
2. Go to the settings for Docker Desktop->General. Turn "Use the WSL 2 based engine" OFF.
3. Wait for it to finish.
4. Once done, you will now get the Resources->Advanced option in Docker Desktop. Set the RAM to more than or equal to 4GB.
5. Run docker compose up while inside the directory containing the docker-compose.yaml file we downloaded.
6. Access OpenSearch Dashboard on http://localhost:5601/

Thanks