Getting ES running is hard. Here are some notes in the form of shell scripts.

elasticsearch_setup.sh

apt-get update
apt-get -y upgrade
apt-get -y install openjdk-7-jre python python-pip python2.7-dev python2.7 git nginx-full varnish
cd /tmp
sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/xvdb
sudo mount /mnt
wget https://download.elasticsearch.org/elasticsearch/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-1.4.2.deb
dpkg -i elasticsearch-1.4.2.deb
mkdir -p /mnt/elasticsearch/data /mnt/elasticsearch/logs
chown -R elasticsearch:elasticsearch /mnt/elasticsearch
echo 'ES_HEAP_SIZE=6g' >> /etc/default/elasticsearch
echo 'cluster.name: YOURCLUSTERNAME
bootstrap.mlockall: true
discovery.zen.ping.multicast.enabled: false
path.data: /mnt/elasticsearch/data
path.logs: /mnt/elasticsearch/logs
node.data: false
node.client: true
' >> /etc/elasticsearch/elasticsearch.yml
sudo start-stop-daemon --start -b --user elasticsearch -c elasticsearch --pidfile /var/run/elasticsearch.pid --exec /usr/share/elasticsearch/bin/elasticsearch -- -d -p /var/run/elasticsearch.pid -Des.default.config=/etc/elasticsearch/elasticsearch.yml -Des.default.path.home=/usr/share/elasticsearch -Des.default.path.logs=/var/log/elasticsearch -Des.default.path.data=/var/lib/elasticsearch -Des.default.path.work=/tmp/elasticsearch -Des.default.path.conf=/etc/elasticsearch
update-rc.d elasticsearch defaults 95 10
sudo /etc/init.d/elasticsearch start