title: How best to verify a client connection to elasticsearch using Java?
body: <p>I'd like a simple way of verifying that ES is available to a Java 
  client. I have a factory that looks something like this to get a 
  client instance: </p>
  
  <p><a href="https://gist.github.com/1364734" rel="noreferrer">https://gist.github.com/1364734</a> </p>
  
  <p>What's the best way to gracefully handle the scenario of ES not being 
  available or is what I have sufficient?</p>