Installing the Wazuh indexer step by step

Install and configure the Wazuh indexer as a single-node or multi-node cluster following step-by-step instructions. Wazuh indexer is a highly scalable full-text search engine and offers advanced security, alerting, index management, deep performance analysis, and several other features.

The installation process is divided into three stages.

Certificates creation
Nodes installation
Cluster initialization

Note

Root user privileges are required to run the commands described below.

1. Certificates creation

Generating the SSL certificates

Download the wazuh-certs-tool.sh script and the config.yml configuration file. This is to create the certificates that will encrypt communications between the Wazuh central components.
# curl -sO https://packages.wazuh.com/4.3/wazuh-certs-tool.sh
# curl -sO https://packages.wazuh.com/4.3/config.yml
Edit ./config.yml and replace the node names and IP values with the corresponding names and IP addresses. You need to do this for all the Wazuh server, the Wazuh indexer, and the Wazuh dashboard nodes. Add as many node fields as needed.
nodes:
  # Wazuh indexer nodes
  indexer:
    - name: node-1
      ip: <indexer-node-ip>
    # - name: node-2
    #   ip: <indexer-node-ip>
    # - name: node-3
    #   ip: <indexer-node-ip>

  # Wazuh server nodes
  # Use node_type only with more than one Wazuh manager
  server:
    - name: wazuh-1
      ip: <wazuh-manager-ip>
    # node_type: master
    # - name: wazuh-2
    #   ip: <wazuh-manager-ip>
    # node_type: worker

  # Wazuh dashboard node
  dashboard:
    - name: dashboard
      ip: <dashboard-node-ip>
To learn more about how to create and configure the certificates, see the Certificates deployment section.
Run the ./wazuh-certs-tool.sh to create the certificates. For a multi-node cluster, these certificates need to be later deployed to all Wazuh instances in your cluster.
#  bash ./wazuh-certs-tool.sh -A
Compress all the necessary files.
# tar -cvf ./wazuh-certificates.tar -C ./wazuh-certificates/ .
# rm -rf ./wazuh-certificates
Copy wazuh-certificates.tar to all the nodes, including Wazuh indexer, Wazuh server, and Wazuh dashboard nodes. This can be done by using scp.

2. Nodes installation

Installing package dependencies

Install the following packages if missing.

# yum install coreutils

# apt install debconf adduser procps

Adding the Wazuh repository

Import the GPG key.

# rpm --import https://packages.wazuh.com/key/GPG-KEY-WAZUH

Add the repository.

# echo -e '[wazuh]\ngpgcheck=1\ngpgkey=https://packages.wazuh.com/key/GPG-KEY-WAZUH\nenabled=1\nname=EL-$releasever - Wazuh\nbaseurl=https://packages.wazuh.com/4.x/yum/\nprotect=1' | tee /etc/yum.repos.d/wazuh.repo

Install the following packages if missing.

# apt install gnupg apt-transport-https

Install the GPG key.

# curl -s https://packages.wazuh.com/key/GPG-KEY-WAZUH | apt-key add -

Add the repository.

# echo "deb https://packages.wazuh.com/4.x/apt/ stable main" | tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/wazuh.list

Update the packages information.
# apt-get update

Installing the Wazuh indexer

Install the Wazuh indexer package.
Yum

APT
# yum -y install wazuh-indexer
# apt -y install wazuh-indexer

Configuring the Wazuh indexer

Edit /etc/wazuh-indexer/opensearch.yml and replace the following values:
network.host: Sets the address of this node for both HTTP and transport traffic. The node will bind to this address and will also use it as its publish address. Accepts an IP address or a hostname.

Use the same node address set in config.yml to create the SSL certificates.

node.name: Name of the Wazuh indexer node as defined in the config.yml file. For example, node-1.
cluster.initial_master_nodes: List of the names of the master-eligible nodes. These names are defined in the config.yml file. Uncomment the node-2 and node-3 lines, change the names, or add more lines, according to your config.yml definitions.
cluster.initial_master_nodes:
- "node-1"
- "node-2"
- "node-3"
discovery.seed_hosts: List of the addresses of the master-eligible nodes. Each element can be either an IP address or a hostname. You may leave this setting commented if you are configuring the Wazuh indexer as a single-node. For multi-node configurations, uncomment this setting and set your master-eligible nodes addresses.
discovery.seed_hosts:
  - "10.0.0.1"
  - "10.0.0.2"
  - "10.0.0.3"
plugins.security.nodes_dn: List of the Distinguished Names of the certificates of all the Wazuh indexer cluster nodes. Uncomment the lines for node-2 and node-3 and change the common names (CN) and values according to your settings and your config.yml definitions.
plugins.security.nodes_dn:
- "CN=node-1,OU=Wazuh,O=Wazuh,L=California,C=US"
- "CN=node-2,OU=Wazuh,O=Wazuh,L=California,C=US"
- "CN=node-3,OU=Wazuh,O=Wazuh,L=California,C=US"

Deploying certificates

Note

Make sure that a copy of wazuh-certificates.tar, created in the previous stage of the installation process, is placed in your working directory.
Run the following commands replacing <indexer-node-name> with the name of the Wazuh indexer node you are configuring as defined in config.yml. For example node-1. This is to deploy the SSL certificates to encrypt communications between the Wazuh central components.
# NODE_NAME=<indexer-node-name>
# mkdir /etc/wazuh-indexer/certs
# tar -xf ./wazuh-certificates.tar -C /etc/wazuh-indexer/certs/ ./$NODE_NAME.pem ./$NODE_NAME-key.pem ./admin.pem ./admin-key.pem ./root-ca.pem
# mv -n /etc/wazuh-indexer/certs/$NODE_NAME.pem /etc/wazuh-indexer/certs/indexer.pem
# mv -n /etc/wazuh-indexer/certs/$NODE_NAME-key.pem /etc/wazuh-indexer/certs/indexer-key.pem
# chmod 500 /etc/wazuh-indexer/certs
# chmod 400 /etc/wazuh-indexer/certs/*
# chown -R wazuh-indexer:wazuh-indexer /etc/wazuh-indexer/certs
Recommended action - If no other Wazuh components are going to be installed on this node, remove wazuh-certificates.tar running rm -f ./wazuh-certificates.tar to increase security.

Starting the service

Enable and start the Wazuh indexer service.
Systemd

SysV Init
# systemctl daemon-reload
# systemctl enable wazuh-indexer
# systemctl start wazuh-indexer
Choose one option according to the operating system used.

RPM-based operating system:
# chkconfig --add wazuh-indexer
# service wazuh-indexer start
Debian-based operating system:
# update-rc.d wazuh-indexer defaults 95 10
# service wazuh-indexer start

Repeat this stage of the installation process for every Wazuh indexer node in your multi-node cluster. Then proceed to the cluster initialization stage.

3. Cluster initialization

Run the Wazuh indexer indexer-security-init.sh script on any Wazuh indexer node to load the new certificates information and start the cluster.
```
# /usr/share/wazuh-indexer/bin/indexer-security-init.sh
```
Note

You only have to initialize the cluster once, there is no need to run this command on every node.

Testing the cluster installation

Replace <WAZUH_INDEXER_IP> and run the following commands to confirm that the installation is successful.

# curl -k -u admin:admin https://<WAZUH_INDEXER_IP>:9200

{
  "name" : "node-1",
  "cluster_name" : "wazuh-cluster",
  "cluster_uuid" : "cMeWTEWxQWeIPDaf1Wx4jw",
  "version" : {
    "number" : "7.10.2",
    "build_type" : "rpm",
    "build_hash" : "e505b10357c03ae8d26d675172402f2f2144ef0f",
    "build_date" : "2022-01-14T03:38:06.881862Z",
    "build_snapshot" : false,
    "lucene_version" : "8.10.1",
    "minimum_wire_compatibility_version" : "6.8.0",
    "minimum_index_compatibility_version" : "6.0.0-beta1"
  },
  "tagline" : "The OpenSearch Project: https://opensearch.org/"
}

Replace <WAZUH_INDEXER_IP> and run the following command to check if the cluster is working correctly.
# curl -k -u admin:admin https://<WAZUH_INDEXER_IP>:9200/_cat/nodes?v

Next steps

The Wazuh indexer is now successfully installed on your single-node or multi-node cluster and you can proceed with installing the Wazuh server. To perform this action, see the Installing the Wazuh server step by step section.

If you want to uninstall the Wazuh indexer, see Uninstall the Wazuh indexer.