Cluster-level shard allocation and routing settings

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Cluster-level shard allocation and routing settings

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Shard allocation is the process of allocating shards to nodes. This can happen during initial recovery, replica allocation, rebalancing, or when nodes are added or removed.

One of the main roles of the master is to decide which shards to allocate to which nodes, and when to move shards between nodes in order to rebalance the cluster.

There are a number of settings available to control the shard allocation process:

Besides these, there are a few other miscellaneous cluster-level settings.

Cluster-level shard allocation settings

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You can use the following settings to control shard allocation and recovery:

cluster.routing.allocation.enable

(Dynamic) Enable or disable allocation for specific kinds of shards:

  • all - (default) Allows shard allocation for all kinds of shards.
  • primaries - Allows shard allocation only for primary shards.
  • new_primaries - Allows shard allocation only for primary shards for new indices.
  • none - No shard allocations of any kind are allowed for any indices.

This setting does not affect the recovery of local primary shards when restarting a node. A restarted node that has a copy of an unassigned primary shard will recover that primary immediately, assuming that its allocation id matches one of the active allocation ids in the cluster state.

cluster.routing.allocation.node_concurrent_incoming_recoveries
(Dynamic) How many concurrent incoming shard recoveries are allowed to happen on a node. Incoming recoveries are the recoveries where the target shard (most likely the replica unless a shard is relocating) is allocated on the node. Defaults to 2.
cluster.routing.allocation.node_concurrent_outgoing_recoveries
(Dynamic) How many concurrent outgoing shard recoveries are allowed to happen on a node. Outgoing recoveries are the recoveries where the source shard (most likely the primary unless a shard is relocating) is allocated on the node. Defaults to 2.
cluster.routing.allocation.node_concurrent_recoveries
(Dynamic) A shortcut to set both cluster.routing.allocation.node_concurrent_incoming_recoveries and cluster.routing.allocation.node_concurrent_outgoing_recoveries.
cluster.routing.allocation.node_initial_primaries_recoveries
(Dynamic) While the recovery of replicas happens over the network, the recovery of an unassigned primary after node restart uses data from the local disk. These should be fast so more initial primary recoveries can happen in parallel on the same node. Defaults to 4.
cluster.routing.allocation.same_shard.host
(Dynamic) If true, forbids multiple copies of a shard from being allocated to distinct nodes on the same host, i.e. which have the same network address. Defaults to false, meaning that copies of a shard may sometimes be allocated to nodes on the same host. This setting is only relevant if you run multiple nodes on each host.

Shard rebalancing settings

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A cluster is balanced when it has an equal number of shards on each node without having a concentration of shards from any index on any node. Elasticsearch runs an automatic process called rebalancing which moves shards between the nodes in your cluster to improve its balance. Rebalancing obeys all other shard allocation rules such as allocation filtering and forced awareness which may prevent it from completely balancing the cluster. In that case, rebalancing strives to achieve the most balanced cluster possible within the rules you have configured. If you are using data tiers then Elasticsearch automatically applies allocation filtering rules to place each shard within the appropriate tier. These rules mean that the balancer works independently within each tier.

You can use the following settings to control the rebalancing of shards across the cluster:

cluster.routing.rebalance.enable

(Dynamic) Enable or disable rebalancing for specific kinds of shards:

  • all - (default) Allows shard balancing for all kinds of shards.
  • primaries - Allows shard balancing only for primary shards.
  • replicas - Allows shard balancing only for replica shards.
  • none - No shard balancing of any kind are allowed for any indices.
cluster.routing.allocation.allow_rebalance

(Dynamic) Specify when shard rebalancing is allowed:

  • always - Always allow rebalancing.
  • indices_primaries_active - Only when all primaries in the cluster are allocated.
  • indices_all_active - (default) Only when all shards (primaries and replicas) in the cluster are allocated.
cluster.routing.allocation.cluster_concurrent_rebalance
(Dynamic) Allow to control how many concurrent shard rebalances are allowed cluster wide. Defaults to 2. Note that this setting only controls the number of concurrent shard relocations due to imbalances in the cluster. This setting does not limit shard relocations due to allocation filtering or forced awareness.

Shard balancing heuristics settings

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Rebalancing works by computing a weight for each node based on its allocation of shards, and then moving shards between nodes to reduce the weight of the heavier nodes and increase the weight of the lighter ones. The cluster is balanced when there is no possible shard movement that can bring the weight of any node closer to the weight of any other node by more than a configurable threshold. The following settings allow you to control the details of these calculations.

cluster.routing.allocation.balance.shard
(Dynamic) Defines the weight factor for the total number of shards allocated on a node (float). Defaults to 0.45f. Raising this raises the tendency to equalize the number of shards across all nodes in the cluster.
cluster.routing.allocation.balance.index
(Dynamic) Defines the weight factor for the number of shards per index allocated on a specific node (float). Defaults to 0.55f. Raising this raises the tendency to equalize the number of shards per index across all nodes in the cluster.
cluster.routing.allocation.balance.threshold
(Dynamic) Minimal optimization value of operations that should be performed (non negative float). Defaults to 1.0f. Raising this will cause the cluster to be less aggressive about optimizing the shard balance.

Regardless of the result of the balancing algorithm, rebalancing might not be allowed due to forced awareness or allocation filtering.

Disk-based shard allocation settings

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The disk-based shard allocator ensures that all nodes have enough disk space without performing more shard movements than necessary. It allocates shards based on a pair of thresholds known as the low watermark and the high watermark. Its primary goal is to ensure that no node exceeds the high watermark, or at least that any such overage is only temporary. If a node exceeds the high watermark then Elasticsearch will solve this by moving some of its shards onto other nodes in the cluster.

It is normal for nodes to temporarily exceed the high watermark from time to time.

The allocator also tries to keep nodes clear of the high watermark by forbidding the allocation of more shards to a node that exceeds the low watermark. Importantly, if all of your nodes have exceeded the low watermark then no new shards can be allocated and Elasticsearch will not be able to move any shards between nodes in order to keep the disk usage below the high watermark. You must ensure that your cluster has enough disk space in total and that there are always some nodes below the low watermark.

Shard movements triggered by the disk-based shard allocator must also satisfy all other shard allocation rules such as allocation filtering and forced awareness. If these rules are too strict then they can also prevent the shard movements needed to keep the nodes' disk usage under control. If you are using data tiers then Elasticsearch automatically configures allocation filtering rules to place shards within the appropriate tier, which means that the disk-based shard allocator works independently within each tier.

If a node is filling up its disk faster than Elasticsearch can move shards elsewhere then there is a risk that the disk will completely fill up. To prevent this, as a last resort, once the disk usage reaches the flood-stage watermark Elasticsearch will block writes to indices with a shard on the affected node. It will also continue to move shards onto the other nodes in the cluster. When disk usage on the affected node drops below the high watermark, Elasticsearch automatically removes the write block.

It is normal for the nodes in your cluster to be using very different amounts of disk space. The balance of the cluster depends only on the number of shards on each node and the indices to which those shards belong. It considers neither the sizes of these shards nor the available disk space on each node, for the following reasons:

  • Disk usage changes over time. Balancing the disk usage of individual nodes would require a lot more shard movements, perhaps even wastefully undoing earlier movements. Moving a shard consumes resources such as I/O and network bandwidth and may evict data from the filesystem cache. These resources are better spent handling your searches and indexing where possible.
  • A cluster with equal disk usage on every node typically performs no better than one that has unequal disk usage, as long as no disk is too full.

You can use the following settings to control disk-based allocation:

cluster.routing.allocation.disk.threshold_enabled
(Dynamic) Defaults to true. Set to false to disable the disk allocation decider. Upon disabling, it will also remove any existing index.blocks.read_only_allow_delete index blocks.
cluster.routing.allocation.disk.watermark.low logo cloud
(Dynamic) Controls the low watermark for disk usage. It defaults to 85%, meaning that Elasticsearch will not allocate shards to nodes that have more than 85% disk used. It can alternatively be set to a ratio value, e.g., 0.85. It can also be set to an absolute byte value (like 500mb) to prevent Elasticsearch from allocating shards if less than the specified amount of space is available. This setting has no effect on the primary shards of newly-created indices but will prevent their replicas from being allocated.
cluster.routing.allocation.disk.watermark.high logo cloud
(Dynamic) Controls the high watermark. It defaults to 90%, meaning that Elasticsearch will attempt to relocate shards away from a node whose disk usage is above 90%. It can alternatively be set to a ratio value, e.g., 0.9. It can also be set to an absolute byte value (similarly to the low watermark) to relocate shards away from a node if it has less than the specified amount of free space. This setting affects the allocation of all shards, whether previously allocated or not.
cluster.routing.allocation.disk.watermark.enable_for_single_data_node
(Static) In earlier releases, the default behaviour was to disregard disk watermarks for a single data node cluster when making an allocation decision. This is deprecated behavior since 7.14 and has been removed in 8.0. The only valid value for this setting is now true. The setting will be removed in a future release.
cluster.routing.allocation.disk.watermark.flood_stage logo cloud

(Dynamic) Controls the flood stage watermark, which defaults to 95%. Elasticsearch enforces a read-only index block (index.blocks.read_only_allow_delete) on every index that has one or more shards allocated on the node, and that has at least one disk exceeding the flood stage. This setting is a last resort to prevent nodes from running out of disk space. The index block is automatically released when the disk utilization falls below the high watermark. Similarly to the low and high watermark values, it can alternatively be set to a ratio value, e.g., 0.95, or an absolute byte value.

You cannot mix the usage of percentage/ratio values and byte values within the watermark settings. Either all values are set to percentage/ratio values, or all are set to byte values. This enforcement is so that Elasticsearch can validate that the settings are internally consistent, ensuring that the low disk threshold is less than the high disk threshold, and the high disk threshold is less than the flood stage threshold.

An example of resetting the read-only index block on the my-index-000001 index:

PUT /my-index-000001/_settings
{
  "index.blocks.read_only_allow_delete": null
}
cluster.routing.allocation.disk.watermark.flood_stage.frozen logo cloud
(Dynamic) Controls the flood stage watermark for dedicated frozen nodes, which defaults to 95%.
cluster.routing.allocation.disk.watermark.flood_stage.frozen.max_headroom logo cloud
(Dynamic) Controls the max headroom for the flood stage watermark for dedicated frozen nodes. Defaults to 20GB when cluster.routing.allocation.disk.watermark.flood_stage.frozen is not explicitly set. This caps the amount of free space required on dedicated frozen nodes.
cluster.info.update.interval
(Dynamic) How often Elasticsearch should check on disk usage for each node in the cluster. Defaults to 30s.

Percentage values refer to used disk space, while byte values refer to free disk space. This can be confusing, since it flips the meaning of high and low. For example, it makes sense to set the low watermark to 10gb and the high watermark to 5gb, but not the other way around.

An example of updating the low watermark to at least 100 gigabytes free, a high watermark of at least 50 gigabytes free, and a flood stage watermark of 10 gigabytes free, and updating the information about the cluster every minute:

PUT _cluster/settings
{
  "persistent": {
    "cluster.routing.allocation.disk.watermark.low": "100gb",
    "cluster.routing.allocation.disk.watermark.high": "50gb",
    "cluster.routing.allocation.disk.watermark.flood_stage": "10gb",
    "cluster.info.update.interval": "1m"
  }
}

Shard allocation awareness

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You can use custom node attributes as awareness attributes to enable Elasticsearch to take your physical hardware configuration into account when allocating shards. If Elasticsearch knows which nodes are on the same physical server, in the same rack, or in the same zone, it can distribute the primary shard and its replica shards to minimise the risk of losing all shard copies in the event of a failure.

When shard allocation awareness is enabled with the dynamic cluster.routing.allocation.awareness.attributes setting, shards are only allocated to nodes that have values set for the specified awareness attributes. If you use multiple awareness attributes, Elasticsearch considers each attribute separately when allocating shards.

The number of attribute values determines how many shard copies are allocated in each location. If the number of nodes in each location is unbalanced and there are a lot of replicas, replica shards might be left unassigned.

Enabling shard allocation awareness

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To enable shard allocation awareness:

  1. Specify the location of each node with a custom node attribute. For example, if you want Elasticsearch to distribute shards across different racks, you might set an awareness attribute called rack_id in each node’s elasticsearch.yml config file.

    node.attr.rack_id: rack_one

    You can also set custom attributes when you start a node:

    ./bin/elasticsearch -Enode.attr.rack_id=rack_one
  2. Tell Elasticsearch to take one or more awareness attributes into account when allocating shards by setting cluster.routing.allocation.awareness.attributes in every master-eligible node’s elasticsearch.yml config file.

    cluster.routing.allocation.awareness.attributes: rack_id 

    Specify multiple attributes as a comma-separated list.

    You can also use the cluster-update-settings API to set or update a cluster’s awareness attributes.

With this example configuration, if you start two nodes with node.attr.rack_id set to rack_one and create an index with 5 primary shards and 1 replica of each primary, all primaries and replicas are allocated across the two nodes.

If you add two nodes with node.attr.rack_id set to rack_two, Elasticsearch moves shards to the new nodes, ensuring (if possible) that no two copies of the same shard are in the same rack.

If rack_two fails and takes down both its nodes, by default Elasticsearch allocates the lost shard copies to nodes in rack_one. To prevent multiple copies of a particular shard from being allocated in the same location, you can enable forced awareness.

Forced awareness

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By default, if one location fails, Elasticsearch assigns all of the missing replica shards to the remaining locations. While you might have sufficient resources across all locations to host your primary and replica shards, a single location might be unable to host ALL of the shards.

To prevent a single location from being overloaded in the event of a failure, you can set cluster.routing.allocation.awareness.force so no replicas are allocated until nodes are available in another location.

For example, if you have an awareness attribute called zone and configure nodes in zone1 and zone2, you can use forced awareness to prevent Elasticsearch from allocating replicas if only one zone is available:

cluster.routing.allocation.awareness.attributes: zone
cluster.routing.allocation.awareness.force.zone.values: zone1,zone2 

Specify all possible values for the awareness attribute.

With this example configuration, if you start two nodes with node.attr.zone set to zone1 and create an index with 5 shards and 1 replica, Elasticsearch creates the index and allocates the 5 primary shards but no replicas. Replicas are only allocated once nodes with node.attr.zone set to zone2 are available.

Cluster-level shard allocation filtering

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You can use cluster-level shard allocation filters to control where Elasticsearch allocates shards from any index. These cluster wide filters are applied in conjunction with per-index allocation filtering and allocation awareness.

Shard allocation filters can be based on custom node attributes or the built-in _name, _host_ip, _publish_ip, _ip, _host, _id and _tier attributes.

The cluster.routing.allocation settings are dynamic, enabling live indices to be moved from one set of nodes to another. Shards are only relocated if it is possible to do so without breaking another routing constraint, such as never allocating a primary and replica shard on the same node.

The most common use case for cluster-level shard allocation filtering is when you want to decommission a node. To move shards off of a node prior to shutting it down, you could create a filter that excludes the node by its IP address:

PUT _cluster/settings
{
  "persistent" : {
    "cluster.routing.allocation.exclude._ip" : "10.0.0.1"
  }
}

Cluster routing settings

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cluster.routing.allocation.include.{attribute}
(Dynamic) Allocate shards to a node whose {attribute} has at least one of the comma-separated values.
cluster.routing.allocation.require.{attribute}
(Dynamic) Only allocate shards to a node whose {attribute} has all of the comma-separated values.
cluster.routing.allocation.exclude.{attribute}
(Dynamic) Do not allocate shards to a node whose {attribute} has any of the comma-separated values.

The cluster allocation settings support the following built-in attributes:

_name

Match nodes by node name

_host_ip

Match nodes by host IP address (IP associated with hostname)

_publish_ip

Match nodes by publish IP address

_ip

Match either _host_ip or _publish_ip

_host

Match nodes by hostname

_id

Match nodes by node id

_tier

Match nodes by the node’s data tier role

_tier filtering is based on node roles. Only a subset of roles are data tier roles, and the generic data role will match any tier filtering. a subset of roles that are data tier roles, but the generic data role will match any tier filtering.

You can use wildcards when specifying attribute values, for example:

PUT _cluster/settings
{
  "persistent": {
    "cluster.routing.allocation.exclude._ip": "192.168.2.*"
  }
}

Miscellaneous cluster settings

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Metadata

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An entire cluster may be set to read-only with the following setting:

cluster.blocks.read_only
(Dynamic) Make the whole cluster read only (indices do not accept write operations), metadata is not allowed to be modified (create or delete indices).
cluster.blocks.read_only_allow_delete
(Dynamic) Identical to cluster.blocks.read_only but allows to delete indices to free up resources.

Don’t rely on this setting to prevent changes to your cluster. Any user with access to the cluster-update-settings API can make the cluster read-write again.

Cluster shard limit

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There is a soft limit on the number of shards in a cluster, based on the number of nodes in the cluster. This is intended to prevent operations which may unintentionally destabilize the cluster.

This limit is intended as a safety net, not a sizing recommendation. The exact number of shards your cluster can safely support depends on your hardware configuration and workload, but should remain well below this limit in almost all cases, as the default limit is set quite high.

If an operation, such as creating a new index, restoring a snapshot of an index, or opening a closed index would lead to the number of shards in the cluster going over this limit, the operation will fail with an error indicating the shard limit.

If the cluster is already over the limit, due to changes in node membership or setting changes, all operations that create or open indices will fail until either the limit is increased as described below, or some indices are closed or deleted to bring the number of shards below the limit.

The cluster shard limit defaults to 1,000 shards per non-frozen data node for normal (non-frozen) indices and 3000 shards per frozen data node for frozen indices. Both primary and replica shards of all open indices count toward the limit, including unassigned shards. For example, an open index with 5 primary shards and 2 replicas counts as 15 shards. Closed indices do not contribute to the shard count.

You can dynamically adjust the cluster shard limit with the following setting:

cluster.max_shards_per_node

(Dynamic) Limits the total number of primary and replica shards for the cluster. Elasticsearch calculates the limit as follows:

cluster.max_shards_per_node * number of non-frozen data nodes

Shards for closed indices do not count toward this limit. Defaults to 1000. A cluster with no data nodes is unlimited.

Elasticsearch rejects any request that creates more shards than this limit allows. For example, a cluster with a cluster.max_shards_per_node setting of 100 and three data nodes has a shard limit of 300. If the cluster already contains 296 shards, Elasticsearch rejects any request that adds five or more shards to the cluster.

Notice that frozen shards have their own independent limit.

cluster.max_shards_per_node.frozen

(Dynamic) Limits the total number of primary and replica frozen shards for the cluster. Elasticsearch calculates the limit as follows:

cluster.max_shards_per_node * number of frozen data nodes

Shards for closed indices do not count toward this limit. Defaults to 3000. A cluster with no frozen data nodes is unlimited.

Elasticsearch rejects any request that creates more frozen shards than this limit allows. For example, a cluster with a cluster.max_shards_per_node.frozen setting of 100 and three frozen data nodes has a frozen shard limit of 300. If the cluster already contains 296 shards, Elasticsearch rejects any request that adds five or more frozen shards to the cluster.

These setting do not limit shards for individual nodes. To limit the number of shards for each node, use the cluster.routing.allocation.total_shards_per_node setting.

User-defined cluster metadata

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User-defined metadata can be stored and retrieved using the Cluster Settings API. This can be used to store arbitrary, infrequently-changing data about the cluster without the need to create an index to store it. This data may be stored using any key prefixed with cluster.metadata.. For example, to store the email address of the administrator of a cluster under the key cluster.metadata.administrator, issue this request:

PUT /_cluster/settings
{
  "persistent": {
    "cluster.metadata.administrator": "[email protected]"
  }
}

User-defined cluster metadata is not intended to store sensitive or confidential information. Any information stored in user-defined cluster metadata will be viewable by anyone with access to the Cluster Get Settings API, and is recorded in the Elasticsearch logs.

Index tombstones

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The cluster state maintains index tombstones to explicitly denote indices that have been deleted. The number of tombstones maintained in the cluster state is controlled by the following setting:

cluster.indices.tombstones.size
(Static) Index tombstones prevent nodes that are not part of the cluster when a delete occurs from joining the cluster and reimporting the index as though the delete was never issued. To keep the cluster state from growing huge we only keep the last cluster.indices.tombstones.size deletes, which defaults to 500. You can increase it if you expect nodes to be absent from the cluster and miss more than 500 deletes. We think that is rare, thus the default. Tombstones don’t take up much space, but we also think that a number like 50,000 is probably too big.

If Elasticsearch encounters index data that is absent from the current cluster state, those indices are considered to be dangling. For example, this can happen if you delete more than cluster.indices.tombstones.size indices while an Elasticsearch node is offline.

You can use the Dangling indices API to manage this situation.

Logger

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The settings which control logging can be updated dynamically with the logger. prefix. For instance, to increase the logging level of the indices.recovery module to DEBUG, issue this request:

PUT /_cluster/settings
{
  "persistent": {
    "logger.org.elasticsearch.indices.recovery": "DEBUG"
  }
}

Persistent tasks allocation

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Plugins can create a kind of tasks called persistent tasks. Those tasks are usually long-lived tasks and are stored in the cluster state, allowing the tasks to be revived after a full cluster restart.

Every time a persistent task is created, the master node takes care of assigning the task to a node of the cluster, and the assigned node will then pick up the task and execute it locally. The process of assigning persistent tasks to nodes is controlled by the following settings:

cluster.persistent_tasks.allocation.enable

(Dynamic) Enable or disable allocation for persistent tasks:

  • all - (default) Allows persistent tasks to be assigned to nodes
  • none - No allocations are allowed for any type of persistent task

This setting does not affect the persistent tasks that are already being executed. Only newly created persistent tasks, or tasks that must be reassigned (after a node left the cluster, for example), are impacted by this setting.

cluster.persistent_tasks.allocation.recheck_interval
(Dynamic) The master node will automatically check whether persistent tasks need to be assigned when the cluster state changes significantly. However, there may be other factors, such as memory usage, that affect whether persistent tasks can be assigned to nodes but do not cause the cluster state to change. This setting controls how often assignment checks are performed to react to these factors. The default is 30 seconds. The minimum permitted value is 10 seconds.