This issue is for discussing whether we should always install the following plugins in Elasticsearch:

• repository-s3
• repository-gcs
• repository-azure

Anyone running Elasticsearch one of the three main Cloud providers is likely using their object storage for backups, and other vendors also have S3-compatible system for performing backups in on-premise environments.

The upside of always bundling these plugins is that it relieves a piece of installation overhead, in particular making it easier to run the Docker image in a cloud environment.

The downside is that the distribution size will increase. There may be / are probably other downsides too.

We could:

1. Convert these plugins to modules and completely bake them in. This makes upgrading the code a non-issue, since it just gets upgraded along with Elasticsearch.
2. Keep them as plugins, which would give administrators the option to remove the plugins again if they wanted, but complicates the story around upgrades.

I would opt for (1) in order to avoid the complexity (and therefore bugs) associated with upgrades.