Unlock the power of Amazon OpenSearch Service: Your learning guide for search, analytics, and generative AI solutions

Whether you’re a developer, data analyst, DevOps engineer, or IT leader, understanding how to unlock the full potential of your search and analytics workloads is critical for success in cloud computing. Amazon OpenSearch Service has evolved into a versatile powerhouse organizations use to build sophisticated search applications, derive meaningful insights through analytics, and now use generative AI capabilities. This comprehensive guide can help you navigate through the learning resources available for each use case so you build the right skills for your specific needs.

AWS Skill Builder trainings

AWS Skill Builder offers comprehensive self-paced digital courses to build your OpenSearch Service expertise:

• Getting Started with Amazon OpenSearch Service – This 1-hour fundamental course covers essential concepts, benefits, and use cases of OpenSearch Service, including search queries, log analytics, and dashboard creation for data visualization.
• Empower Search with AI using Amazon OpenSearch Service – This is a 2-hour advanced course that covers AI-driven search capabilities using OpenSearch Service. The course explores search engine fundamentals, semantic search, vector search implementation, neural sparse search, and vector database sizing principles, with a focus on balancing computational efficiency and performance optimization.
• Migrating from Elasticsearch to Amazon OpenSearch Service – This detailed 3-hour course outlines the six-stage migration journey from Elasticsearch to OpenSearch Service. It covers migration planning, proof-of-concept development, implementation patterns, and operational best practices.
• Implement Lexical Search Using Amazon OpenSearch Service – This 2-hour course focuses on OpenSearch Service capabilities such as data ingestion options, client communication, mapping functionality, aggregation types, performance tuning options, and performing lexical and advanced search queries.
• Amazon OpenSearch Service – Building Observability Solutions – This is a 1-hour course that teaches how to analyze telemetry data using OpenSearch Service observability features, including domain creation, dashboard building, and analysis of logs, traces, and metrics.
• Optimizing Foundation Models– This 1-hour course covers OpenSearch Service vector database capabilities for RAG implementations, teaching how to store and manage embeddings for AI applications.
• Building Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) workflows with Amazon OpenSearch Service – This 1-hour course explains RAG techniques and their role in enhancing large language model (LLM) performance. The course covers LLM workflows, knowledge base creation, OpenSearch search methods, and the integration of Amazon OpenSearch Serverless with Amazon Bedrock Knowledge Bases for embeddings and information retrieval.

Hands-on learning with AWS Workshops

For those seeking practical experience with OpenSearch Service, AWS Workshops provide guided, hands-on learning through step-by-step instructions to build search, analytics, and AI solutions using the AWS Management Console.

Search and AI:

• Semantic and vector search with Amazon OpenSearch Service – Demonstrates using OpenSearch Service vector database capabilities for semantic search, neural search, hybrid search, and conversational search.
• Use OpenSearch Service as a vector store for gen AI applications – Explores integrating OpenSearch Service with LLMs for generative AI applications, focusing on vector search and retrieval for improved accuracy.
• When life hands you data, grab OpenSearch – Introduces working with OpenSearch for data ingestion, search, aggregation, and analysis, with a focus on application search and log analytics.
• Getting started with Amazon OpenSearch Serverless – Provides hands-on experience with Amazon OpenSearch Serverless, covering setup, query types, visualizations, and security configurations.

Log analytics and observability:

• Microservice observability with Amazon OpenSearch Service – Teaches how to use open source tools and OpenSearch Service for observability in distributed applications, covering logs, traces, and metrics.
• SIEM on Amazon OpenSearch Service Workshop – Guides building a security information and event management (SIEM) system on OpenSearch Service for log ingestion, analysis, and dashboarding.

AWS Certifications

AWS Certifications validate your technical expertise in specific domains of cloud computing. For professionals working with OpenSearch, several certifications demonstrate proficiency in search, analytics, and data solutions:

Primary certifications:

• AWS Certified Data Engineer – Associate – Validates expertise in designing data models, managing data lifecycles, and ensuring data quality, essential for OpenSearch Service implementations.
• AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional – Demonstrates the ability to design distributed systems and complex architectures incorporating OpenSearch Service.

Supporting certifications:

• AWS Certified Machine Learning – Specialty – For those using OpenSearch Service in machine learning (ML) pipelines or for advanced search capabilities, this certification validates expertise in building, training, tuning, and deploying ML models on AWS.
• AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional – Validates skills in operating and scaling OpenSearch Service clusters and implementing observability solutions.

Additional resources

To learn more, refer to the following resources.

Community engagement:

• OpenSearch Community Calls
• AWS User Groups

Online resources:

• AWS blog posts on Amazon OpenSearch Service
• AWS Solutions Library

Staying current

The OpenSearch ecosystem is rapidly evolving, especially in areas such as vector search and generative AI. Regular engagement with these learning resources keeps your skills current and valuable. AWS frequently updates training content to reflect new features and best practices.

Ready to begin your OpenSearch Service journey? Visit AWS Skill Builder to access these resources and start building your expertise today.