Elasticsearch VS Azure Search: Overall Comparison and Performance Study

Elasticsearch Vs Azure Search

Today in this article, we are going to compare and contrast between Elasticsearch and Azure Search. But before directly hopping into the differences, let us first highlight Elasticsearch and Azure Search individually.

Elasticsearch

Elasticsearch is basically a multitenant-featuring full-text search and analytics engine with its foundation on the Apache Lucene library. Its original author was Shay Banon, who released the first stable version of elastic search on February 2010. Elastisearch is written using Java and it is partly issued under open-license agreements (mainly the Apache license), while few other parts of the software are under commercial Elastic license.

Elasticsearch is rated as the most popular search engine for different enterprises. It allows us to perform a wide range of searching practices like structured, unstructured, geo-searching, and metric-searching and also helps in storing and analyzing big volumes of data in lesser time. Elasticsearch.

Salient Features

• Free and Open-source software.
• Featuring real-time index.
• Highly Scalable.
• Extremely resilient.
• Supports multitenancy
• Highly distributed
• Features auto-rebalancing and auto-routing.
• Supports facetting and percolating.
• Highly reliable search and data analysis.
• Advanced security protocols for the protection of sensitive data, including the use of TLS for encrypted communication.

Some of the key customers of Elastisearch include:

• NASA
• Microsoft
• Cisco
• Wikipedia
• Verizon
• The New York Times

Official Site: https://www.elastic.co/products/elasticsearch

Azure Search

Azure Search is a component of the Microsoft Azure Cloud Platform. It is mainly a search-as-a-service cloud service for mobile and web-app development. It is claimed as the only cloud service which is powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) for easy identification, analysis, and exploration of data. It helps in reducing the vast complexity of data ingestion as well as index creation, using its unique storage solutions and offers index functionality exposed via simple REST API or .NET SDK.

Salient Features

• Features tonnes of different options like faceting, suggestions, geo-search, synonyms, scoring, etc.
• Using the power of AI convert raw data into high organized searchable content.
• Features Cognitive search feature for developing enrichment pipelines which are composed of AI APIs for structuring your data before indexing.
• Supports OCR, key-phrase extraction, people and organization detection, location, hit highlighting, etc.
• Highly customizable to meet up all your business requirements.
• Highly flexible custom models, rankers and classifiers for synching search results with your business goals.
• Advanced multilayer data security.

Available in the following versions-

• Free version
• Storage — 50MB
• Max Indexes/Service-3
• Max Documents Hosted- 10,000.
• Data Transfer- Standard Rates apply
• Basic Version
• Per Search Unit price: $0.101/hour or $73.73/month (and $9.70/month for West Japan and South Brazil).
• Storage: Maximum 2GB/Service
• Number of Documents Hosted: 1 Million
• ScaleOut Limits: 3 units/service
• Indexes/Service: 15
• Data Transfer- Standard Rates apply
• Standard Version 1 (S1)
• Per Search Unit price: $0.336/hour or $245.28/month (and $324.12/month for West Japan and South Brazil).
• Storage: Maximum 25GB/partition i.e 300GB documents per service.
• ScaleOut Limits: 36 units/service
• Indexes/Service: 50
• Documents Hosted: 15 million/partition i.e 180 million documents/service.
• Data Transfer- Standard Rates apply
• Standard Version 2 (S2)
• Per Search Unit price: $1.344/hour or $981.12/month (and $1,295.02/month for West Japan and South Brazil).
• Storage: 100GB/partition i.e 1TB documents per service.
• Indexes/Service: 200
• Documents Hosted: 60 million/partition i.e 720 million documents/service
• ScaleOut Limits: 36 units/service
• Data Transfer- Standard Rates apply.
• Standard Version 3 (S3)

Features an additional High-density mode which allows the users to generate a larger amount of indexes within a single service.

• Per Search Unit price: $2.688/hour or $1,962.24/month (and $2,592.96/month for West Japan and South Brazil).
• Storage: 200GB/partition i.e 2TB documents/service.
• Indexes/Service: 200/partition in normal mode and 1000/partition in High-Density Mode.
• Documents Hosted: 120 million/partitions i.e 1.4 billion documents/service (And 1 million documents/index in High-density mode).
• ScaleOut Limits: 36 units/service.
• Data Transfer- Standard Rates apply.
• Storage Optimised (L1)
• Per Search Unit price: $1.84/hour
• Storage: 1TB/ partition i.e 12TB documents/service
• Indexes/Service: 10
• ScaleOut Limits: 36 units/service
• Data Transfer- Standard Rates apply.
• Storage Optimized (L2)
• Per Search Unit price: $3.68/hour
• Storage: 2TB/ partition i.e 24TB documents/service
• Indexes/Service: 10
• ScaleOut Limits: 36 units/service
• Data Transfer- Standard Rates apply

Some of the key customers include:

• Samsung
• eBay
• Pixar
• Apple iCloud
• Xerox

Official Site: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-in/services/search/?cdn=disable

Elasticsearch and Azure Search — Comparison Study

Now the real question lies, which one is better- Elastisearch or Azure Search. We have already mentioned about their basic features, but now we are going to consider a wide range of categories and make them compete for the first position.

• Languages Supported

Microsoft Azure Supports a number of languages when compared with Elastisearch. So in this category, Azure Search wins.

• Data Types Supported

Elastisearch supports a wider range of data types when compared with Azure Search. So Elasticsearch wins in this round.

• DB Engine Rankings

This ranking is based on the popularity of database management systems.

Detailed Chart: https://db-engines.com/en/ranking_trend/system/Elasticsearch%3BMicrosoft+Azure+Search%3BSolr

• Supported Devices

Azure Search is supported over a larger number of devices over Elasticsearch. So Azure Search wins in this round.

• Supports Available

Azure Search provides a wider range of supports, so another win for Azure Search.

• Ranking
• For Elasticsearch
• Ranks 1ST in Search as a Service on considering the following
• Views: 4,357
• Compariosons: 2,035
• Reviews: 8
• Average Words/Review: 326
• Rating: 8.3/10
• For Azure Search
• Ranks 2ND in Search as a Service on considering the following
• Views: 3,684
• Compariosons: 2,181
• Reviews: 2
• Average Words/Review: 503
• Rating: 9/10

Conclusion

The overall result is mixed, Elasticsearch gaining grounds over Azure Search in certain categories and vice verse. It is up to the user to decide the winner, after considering which among the two is suitable for fulfilling the requirements.