This is an updated version of my blog post from two years ago. It features both the new Azure Portal, and the new Elasticsearch 2.x series. It also incorporates some helpful additions based on my experience since. Thanks to Yves Goeleven for providing some sound Azure advice.

So...

Before we start, ...

Running Elasticsearch in the cloud with Azure is fairly easy. There are several guides out there talking about how to do this, but my way of doing this is a bit different so I thought it'd be worth blogging about. I've also included discussions on some important related topics in the end.

To highlig...