Clarify Vector Database project guidance

[kosabogi]

Summary

• Add the Vector Database project type and exact value to cross-project search tag guidance.
• Clarify the Elasticsearch and Vector Database project choices in the Search getting-started flow.
• Distinguish Elasticsearch Serverless API profiles from the dedicated Vector Database project type using tabs.
• Recommend the Vector Database project type for embedding-driven workloads on the vector search landing page.

This draft follows the project positioning introduced in #7961. Open product questions are listed in a separate PR comment.

[kosabogi]

Questions to confirm

@alexmarhaba @dustincoates Before finalizing the content, could you please confirm the following?

1. Project selection: Is this the intended recommendation: use Vector Database when embeddings and similarity search are central to the workload, and use the Elasticsearch project type for general-purpose or mixed lexical, time series, and analytics workloads?
2. Agent Builder: I can see Agent Builder in a Vector Database project in QA, and the current Kibana configuration also enables it and includes it in the Vector Database navigation. However, PR #7961 currently tells users to choose the Elasticsearch project type when they need Agent Builder. Is that guidance outdated? Should Agent Builder be removed from that Elasticsearch-specific recommendation, and should we document a Vector Database-specific access path?

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🔍 Preview links for changed docs

• explore-analyze/cross-project-search/cross-project-search-tags.md
• solutions/search/get-started.md
• solutions/search/vector.md
• solutions/search/vector/bring-own-vectors.md
• solutions/search/vector/dense-vector.md
• solutions/search/vector/knn.md

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[alexmarhaba]

Should Agent Builder be removed from that Elasticsearch-specific recommendation, and should we document a Vector Database-specific access path?

Agent builder is available on all project types, so not sure why we're recommending to use ES for it here, I would remove that mention.

[kosabogi]

2. PR #7961 currently tells users to choose the Elasticsearch project type when they need Agent Builder

Thanks Alex, I left a comment on that PR mentioning this.
cc @yetanothertw

[dustincoates]

Project selection: Is this the intended recommendation: use Vector Database when embeddings and similarity search are central to the workload, and use the Elasticsearch project type for general-purpose or mixed lexical, time series, and analytics workloads?

That would be a good way to put it. We'll probably want to eventually change it so that more and more of the mixed workloads move over to VDB, but for now, I think this is good.

[leemthompo]

We're now distributing decision guidance across get-started.md, vector.md, dense-vector.md.

Think about presenting this together on one neutral comparison page or in one expanded "Choose your deployment type" section in get-started.md. The vector overview and dense-vector pages could then link to that guidance instead of duplicating partial recommendations.

The page needs to compare:

• Elasticsearch with general_purpose
• Elasticsearch with vector
• Elasticsearch VDB

A comparison table might be clearer than tabs because users need to evaluate all three choices together.

[leemthompo]

My main concern is that the Search get-started page now includes way too much detail about choosing and configuring a project. I'd keep only the concise project-type comparison and creation paths here; move the detailed guidance to the relevant deploy-manage content in #7961.

[kosabogi]

My main concern is that the Search get-started page now includes way too much detail about choosing and configuring a project. I'd keep only the concise project-type comparison and creation paths here; move the detailed guidance to the relevant deploy-manage content in #7961.

I agree that this section has grown too long. I applied your suggestions and left a comment on @yetanothertw’s PR requesting clarification about the distinction between the Elasticsearch vector profile and the Vector Database project type, with a link to the detailed profile guidance.

The failing links depend on #7961, which introduces the target section and anchor. I’ll update this branch from main after #7961 merges and the link validation should then pass.