Added back ECH plan for production page

[kunisen]

Added back ECH plan for production page as it's important to have.

Background & Motivation

Internal GH ticket: https://github.com/elastic/support-tech-lead/issues/1576

TL;DR: This is part of the internal ticket work. In this doc PR, we add the original elastic cloud plan for production page - https://web.archive.org/web/20250404052823/https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/cloud/current/ec-planning.html back to docs v3.

Details:

• We need to add some contents to https://www.elastic.co/docs/troubleshoot/monitoring/node-moves-outages based on this external KB: https://support.elastic.dev/knowledge/view/028f4337
• But one crucial page https://web.archive.org/web/20250404052823/https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/cloud/current/ec-planning.html was gone from current docs v3 system.
• We understand this page is rephrased and replaced by https://www.elastic.co/docs/deploy-manage/production-guidance/availability-and-resilience/resilience-in-ech, however, a) it's not obvious and b) the page redirect is not very meaningful, it redirects the original page to "elasticsearch production" page, but we want to go to "elastic cloud hosted production" page, and c) elastic cloud hosted production page is good to have one independent page as it makes things easier to update and include important info pieces that users should know.

After PR is merged

a) ECH plan for production page will be back

b) The page will be referenced in below 2 places:

c) The mapped page will change

The mapped page for https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/cloud/current/ec-planning.html will be changed from https://www.elastic.co/docs/deploy-manage/production-guidance/elasticsearch-in-production-environments (because the current map is not very meaningful) to https://www.elastic.co/docs/deploy-manage/deploy/elastic-cloud/elastic-cloud-hosted-planning (available after PR merge).

d) Some minor change

• Structure change in toc.yml
• Removed some redundant content in https://www.elastic.co/docs/deploy-manage/production-guidance/availability-and-resilience/resilience-in-ech since major part will be described in the new page

Additional Notes

If we decide not to use the structure I proposed above, please help us at least make the elastic cloud plan for production page a separate page and make it searchable from internet. It's crucial for us (support) to guide customer the proper context. (The deletion of this page actually should not have happened actually but we understand it's during docs migration so it's fine this time.)

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Thanks!

[shainaraskas]

blocking while investigating

[romain-chanu]

➕ with the requested changes. In the new docs, the information we used to have in a single place for ECH "plan for production" best practices is now scattered across multiple pages. We definitely need to restructure the content here.

[kunisen]

Thanks @shainaraskas and @romain-chanu

Hi Shaina, is there anything we are waiting on?
If so, could you please involve me or other support people into the sync so that we could have further discussion please?
We really need this page back so that we can avoid lots of confusions from our cloud users.
(A page with enough necessary information is better than the info pieces scattered in different pages)

[eedugon]

thanks @kunisen and @romain-chanu for bringing this.

During the migration we merged the content of the original ECH page into multiple pages because of two reasons:

• The recommendations for ECH were also valid for other deployment types
• Some production and performance related recommendations we had in other sources were also valid for ECH.

But it's true that after the changes, the interesting parts for ECH users are now spread in multiple pages, together with content that might not be that interesting for pure ECH users.

Let me share some responses to your original message:

the page redirect is not very meaningful, it redirects the original page to "elasticsearch production" page,

That's clearly a bug, we shouldn't have redirected it there, you are right.

But one crucial page was gone from current docs v3 system. We understand this page is rephrased and replaced by https://www.elastic.co/docs/deploy-manage/production-guidance/availability-and-resilience/resilience-in-ech

More than gone or replaced the content has been merged and refined into other pages (the one you mention and the scaling considerations doc).

Anyway we understand that having a single source doc to point ECH customers to the most important recommendations for them is really important, instead of sharing multiple links (the resilience in ECH and ECE page + scaling considerations + perhaps other docs).

I'm ok with bringing this page back, in the TOC either at Deploy -> ECH -> Plan for production or at Production Guidance -> (new page).

What I'd like to do afterwards (but this could be in a different PR), would be to enrich the page you are adding back with links towards interesting and relevant areas of the Production Guidance section.

Let me check this with @shainaraskas and we will get back to you with a proposal (either merge this PR and prepare some extra changes soon or directly with a different PR).

[maggieghamry]

I also approve with requested changes, and ++++ on (re) separating the ec-* docs so that we have a dedicated and clear documentation that contains all of the ECH documentation. While I do appreciate the consolidation intent to reduce pages and reduce redundancy, because ECH and Serverless have a number of exceptions, it is much more difficult to find what was once dedicated documentation, which are shared quite often.

I'm ok with bringing this page back, in the TOC either at Deploy -> ECH -> Plan for production or at Production Guidance -> (new page).

+1 for new page - these should be explicit and clear instructions (same as details for host maintenance that we're addressing here). "Bundling" a lot of information can end up creating more questions than providing answers, and is not easy to search for or find if page names are not intuitive.

What I'd like to do afterwards (but this could be in a different PR), would be to enrich the page you are adding back with links towards interesting and relevant areas of the Production Guidance section.

Sounds good to me. Let's please bring the pages back and I'm ok with another PR to help revisit what all needs to come back over into the new docs format so that important ECH documentation is still accurate and easy to understand for all users.

[eedugon]

@kunisen , I have applied very small refinement to the added doc, and moved it in the TOC to the third position on the ECH section, right after Create a deployment and Access Kibana elements, to better align with other deploy sections that we have in the docs.

This is the preview.

Let's add the page back and we will work from there about extra refinements and improving the quality of the content and the doc.

Edu's comment represents the views of the docs team :)

[kunisen]

Thank you @eedugon
The page after your tweak looks great.

I am also fine with we have a dedicated section about "production guidance", however, previously we put ECE/ECH under "Elasticsearch" which was wrong IMHO.

I think we should consider talking with ECE / ECH / ECK teams, also maybe serverless, and make each product a separate page about "production guidance". For sure there might be overlap, and we can call it out if we feel to put the overlap out is more concise and succinct.

Thanks!

[eedugon]

@kunisen :

I think we should consider talking with ECE / ECH / ECK teams, also maybe serverless, and make each product a separate page about "production guidance". For sure there might be overlap, and we can call it out if we feel to put the overlap out is more concise and succinct.

Yes, we will work on that area. Wait for the next PRs, I'll ping you in everything related with this area.