Launch a Search Workspace: Managed OpenSearch Plus Dashboards in Minutes
Standing up a search stack usually starts the same way every time. Provision an OpenSearch cluster. Stand up Dashboards next to it. Wire Dashboards to the cluster with an endpoint and credentials you paste into a config file. Make sure the security plugin lets the two talk. Decide where Dashboards keeps its saved objects. Only then do you get to the part you actually wanted: indexing data and running a query.
The Launch a search workspace stack collapses that into one button. You get a managed OpenSearch cluster and a full OpenSearch Dashboards workspace, attached and EU-resident, in minutes, with nothing to wire by hand.
What you launch
Pick Launch a search workspace from the catalog and the platform stands up two things and connects them:
- A managed OpenSearch cluster. A distributed search and analytics engine and the durable home for your indices. Real indices you can query, snapshot, and reach from your own application code over the REST API.
- OpenSearch Dashboards, attached to it. The companion web app: Discover for ad-hoc search, a visualization and dashboard builder, and Dev Tools, an in-browser console for sending raw queries straight to the cluster.
The app already knows the cluster endpoint and credentials. They are injected during launch, so by the time the stack reaches Running there is nothing left to configure. You open the URL, sign in with a cluster user, and you are indexing data and building dashboards.
Saved views that live in a cluster you own
There is one detail worth calling out, because it is what makes this a workspace and not just two services next to each other. OpenSearch Dashboards has no database of its own. It persists its saved objects, your index patterns, saved searches, visualizations, and dashboards, into a system index on the OpenSearch cluster.
That means your saved work lives in the cluster you own. It is backed up with the cluster and survives a restart or replacement of the Dashboards app. There is no separate metadata store to manage, and no risk of your dashboards being trapped in an opaque app you cannot reach.
Open Dev Tools and index a document directly:
POST articles/_doc
{ "title": "Getting started with OpenSearch", "tags": ["search", "guide"], "views": 120 }
Then search it:
GET articles/_search
{ "query": { "match": { "title": "started" } } }
That is the same REST API your application code calls. Build an index pattern, open Discover, pin a visualization onto a dashboard, and every one of those saved objects lands in the cluster, not on a disk you cannot see.
Trust, built into the launch
Like every stack, the search workspace launch carries the platform guarantees in the flow itself.
A hard cost preview before you launch. You see exactly what the stack costs, the cluster plus the app, broken down per resource, before anything is provisioned. You accept a number, then the launch runs.
Atomic rollback. A stack is two resources coming up together. If either step fails, the whole launch rolls back cleanly. You end up with the finished workspace or with nothing, never with an orphaned cluster quietly costing you money.
EU data residency. The OpenSearch cluster, the Dashboards app, and the traffic between them all stay within the platform's European footprint. Residency is where the platform runs, not a setting you remember to flip.
Launch one
# 1. Preview the cost
curl -X POST https://api.foundrydb.com/stacks/preview \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $FOUNDRYDB_TOKEN" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"template_name": "search-workspace"}'
# 2. Accept the previewed total and launch
curl -X POST https://api.foundrydb.com/stacks \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $FOUNDRYDB_TOKEN" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"name": "my-search", "template_name": "search-workspace", "accepted_monthly_cost": 96.00}'
Poll the stack until it is Running, open the endpoint_url, sign in with a cluster user, and you are searching. Or do the whole thing from the Stacks catalog in the console with one click. The cost above is illustrative; the preview returns the real figure.
For the full walkthrough, including signing in with the cluster login, indexing data with Dev Tools, building a Discover view and a dashboard, and tearing the stack down atomically, read the Launch a search workspace tutorial.
Stop wiring Dashboards to a cluster by hand. Launch the finished workspace, on OpenSearch you own, in Europe, today.