How to Migrate Elasticsearch Databases to DigitalOcean OpenSearch

While DigitalOcean OpenSearch does not currently support online migration, you can reindex data from a remote Elasticsearch cluster to migrate it to an OpenSearch cluster.

Allowlist Elasticsearch

Add the Elasticsearch cluster to your OpenSearch cluster’s allowlist by adding the reindex.remote.whitelist parameter, pointing to your Elasticsearch cluster in host:port format.

Export Index Mapping

From your Elasticsearch cluster, stop writes to each index you want to migrate.

Then, use the following curl command to export the index mapping from the source Elasticsearch instance into a file named mapping.json, which the migration process uses as a reference:

curl https://username:password@tutorial-opensearch-do-user-10312437-0.i.db.ondigitalocean.com:25060/logs-2026-01-27/_mapping > mapping.json

Update mapping.json to the format necessary for migration by running the following jq command:

jq .[].mappings mapping.json > src_mapping.json

Alternatively, you can update mapping.json manually by editing it using the text editor of your choice and changing the following:

• Remove the wrapping {"logs-2026-01-27":{"mappings": ... }}
• Keep {"properties":...}}

Reindex

Then, create an empty index on your destination OpenSearch cluster, such as by using the following curl command:

curl -XPUT https://username:password@tutorial-opensearch-do-user-10312437-0.i.db.ondigitalocean.com:25060/logs-2026-01-27

Import the mapping to the destination OpenSearch index:

curl -XPUT https://username:password@tutorial-opensearch-do-user-10312437-0.i.db.ondigitalocean.com:25060/logs-2026-01-27/_mapping \
-H 'Content-type: application/json' -T src_mapping.json

And submit the reindexing request to finalize the migration:

curl -XPOST https://username:password@tutorial-opensearch-do-user-10312437-0.i.db.ondigitalocean.com:25060/_reindex \
  -H 'Content-type: application/json' \
  -d '{"source":
          {"index": "logs-2026-01-27",
           "remote":
               {"username": "your-remote-username",
                "password": "your-remote-password",
                "host": "https://tutorial-opensearch-do-user-10312437-0.i.db.ondigitalocean.com:25060:25070"
               }
          },
       "dest":
          {"index": "logs-2026-01-27"}
      }'

Once the reindexing process is complete, update your clients to use the new index on your DigitalOcean OpenSearch cluster and resume any paused writing activity.