We need to access ElasticSearch in a namespace within minikube and the other Pods can’t connect to 9200. It turns out that from the box its limited to localhost and the network.host property needs updating.

Setting network.host in the elasticsearch.yml configuration file on a docker container will put the instance into “Production” mode which will invoke a load of limit checks including, but not limited to the number of threads allocated for a user.

To my knowledge setting ulimits in Docker isn’t trivial so another way to expose ElasticSearch to other pods is required.

The answer appears to be, set http.host: 0.0.0.0 so that its listening on all interfaces. This will allow you to stay as a development instance without all the ulimit issues stopping startup and you can access outside of the Pod.