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IMPORTANT: No additional bug fixes or documentation updates will be released for this version. For the latest information, see the current release documentation.
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Elastic Docs ›Kibana Guide [7.10] ›Alerting and Actions

Scale and performance

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Scale and performance

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Kibana alerting run both alert checks and actions as persistent background tasks. This has two major benefits:

  • Persistence: all task state and scheduling is stored in Elasticsearch, so if Kibana is restarted, alerts and actions will pick up where they left off.
  • Scaling: multiple Kibana instances can read from and update the same task queue in Elasticsearch, allowing the alerting and action load to be distributed across instances. In cases where a Kibana instance no longer has capacity to run alert checks or actions, capacity can be increased by adding additional Kibana instances.

Running background alert checks and actions

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Kibana background tasks are managed by:

  • Polling an Elasticsearch task index for overdue tasks at 3 second intervals.
  • Tasks are then claiming them by updating them in the Elasticsearch index, using optimistic concurrency control to prevent conflicts. Each Kibana instance can run a maximum of 10 concurrent tasks, so a maximum of 10 tasks are claimed each interval.
  • Tasks are run on the Kibana server.
  • In the case of alerts which are recurring background checks, upon completion the task is scheduled again according to the check interval.

Because tasks are polled at 3 second intervals and only 10 tasks can run concurrently per Kibana instance, it is possible for alert and action tasks to be run late. This can happen if:

  • Alerts use a small check interval. The lowest interval possible is 3 seconds, though intervals of 30 seconds or higher are recommended.
  • Many alerts or actions must be run at once. In this case pending tasks will queue in Elasticsearch, and be pulled 10 at a time from the queue at 3 second intervals.
  • Long running tasks occupy slots for an extended time, leaving fewer slots for other tasks.
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