Install Elasticsearch and ESRally on the Cobalt 100 virtual machine instance

Set up the virtual machine for Elasticsearch and ESRally

In this section, you’ll prepare your Cobalt 100 virtual machine for Elasticsearch and ESRally. After installing the base packages, you’ll install Elasticsearch and the benchmarking tool.

Install dependencies on virtual machine

Start by updating the package index and installing the system dependencies. This includes openjdk-21-jdk, which Elasticsearch requires, and apt-transport-https, ca-certificates, and software-properties-common, which are needed to add external package repositories in the next step:

    

        
        
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y build-essential net-tools curl wget python3-dev python3-venv python3-pip openjdk-21-jdk apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl software-properties-common 
sudo apt -y dist-upgrade
sudo apt -y autoremove
sudo apt -y autoclean

    

ESRally requires Python 3.10. Ubuntu 24.04 ships with Python 3.12 by default, which ESRally doesn’t support. The deadsnakes PPA provides older Python versions for Ubuntu that you can use to install Python 3.10 alongside the system default without replacing it.

Add the deadsnakes PPA and install Python 3.10:

    

        
        
sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:deadsnakes/ppa
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y python3.10-dev python3.10 python3.10-venv

    

Create a dedicated virtual environment for ESRally named rally using Python 3.10. Then, add two lines to .bashrc so both the virtual environment and the JAVA21_HOME variable are available in every new shell session. ESRally uses JAVA21_HOME to locate the correct JDK at runtime:

    

        
        
python3.10 -m venv rally
echo "source $HOME/rally/bin/activate" >> $HOME/.bashrc
echo "export JAVA21_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-21-openjdk-arm64" >> $HOME/.bashrc

    

Reload your shell configuration to activate the rally virtual environment and set the JAVA21_HOME environment variable:

    

        
        
source $HOME/.bashrc

    

Confirm that Java is available and points to OpenJDK 21:

    

        
        
which java
java --version

    

The output is similar to:

    

        
        /usr/bin/java

openjdk 21.0.10 2026-01-20
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 21.0.10+7-Ubuntu-124.04)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 21.0.10+7-Ubuntu-124.04, mixed mode, sharing)

        
    

Install Elasticsearch and ESRally

Add the Elastic APT package repository and install Elasticsearch. The first command imports the Elastic GPG signing key so apt can verify package authenticity. The second registers the Elastic 9.x repository. After installation, enable the service so it starts automatically on reboot, then start it:

    

        
        
curl -fsSL https://artifacts.elastic.co/GPG-KEY-elasticsearch | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/elasticsearch-keyring.gpg
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/elasticsearch-keyring.gpg] https://artifacts.elastic.co/packages/9.x/apt stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/elastic-9.x.list
sudo apt update && sudo apt install elasticsearch -y
sudo systemctl enable elasticsearch
sudo systemctl start elasticsearch

    

With Elasticsearch running, install ESRally into the active rally virtual environment:

    

        
        
pip install --upgrade pip
pip install esrally

    

Confirm that Elasticsearch is installed and running:

    

        
        
sudo systemctl status elasticsearch

    

The output is similar to:

    

        
        elasticsearch.service - Elasticsearch
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/elasticsearch.service; enabled; preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Thu 2026-04-23 15:18:13 UTC; 2min 3s ago
       Docs: https://www.elastic.co
   Main PID: 722 (java)
      Tasks: 92 (limit: 38379)
     Memory: 16.5G (peak: 16.5G)
        CPU: 43.282s
     CGroup: /system.slice/elasticsearch.service

        
    

Confirm that ESRally is installed:

    

        
        
esrally --version

    

The output is similar to:

    

        
        esrally 2.13.0

        
    

Note the Elasticsearch version your instance is running, as you’ll need it in the next section. Elasticsearch 9.x enables HTTPS and authentication by default, so a plain HTTP request to localhost:9200 returns an HTML redirect rather than JSON. Check the installed package version instead:

    

        
        
dpkg -l elasticsearch | grep elasticsearch

    

The output shows the installed package version in the third column. For example:

    

        
        ii  elasticsearch  9.4.0  arm64  Distributed RESTful search engine built for the cloud

        
    

Use this version value for the --distribution-version flag when running ESRally.

What you’ve learned and what’s next

You’ve now prepared the virtual machine and installed both Elasticsearch and ESRally.

Next, you’ll run the geonames benchmark and review the baseline performance results.