Configuration Changes in Elasticsearch

Last updated on Aug 22, 2022

Elasticsearch uses circuit breakers to prevent its nodes from running out of JVM memory. If Elasticsearch estimates that an operation in progress will exceed the set circuit breaker limits, it stops the operation and returns an error. Hevo catches some of the exceptions thrown by Elasticsearch and recommends corrective actions. This document lists some of the exceptions and the recommended changes to your Elasticsearch settings.

Updating the configuration settings

You can configure and update the settings on a running cluster in your Generic Elasticsearch instance using the cluster update settings API. You can also modify the settings on an unstarted or shut down node using the Elasticsearch configuration file, elasticsearch.yml.

To make any configuration changes to your AWS Elasticsearch instance, you need to contact Hevo Support.

Changing Elasticsearch Settings

Exception while sorting or aggregating by the _id field.

Probable cause Aggregation or sorting of documents is being done using the _id field.
Error Message Fielddata access on the _id field is disallowed, you can re-enable it by updating the dynamic cluster setting: indices.id_field_data.enabled.

Recommended action: Set the value of indices.id_field_data.enabled to true in elasticsearch.yml or using the cluster update settings API.


Circuit breaker exception when loading a [<field>] into the field data cache.

Probable cause The heap memory required to load the data for the field may cause the field data cache to exceed the predefined memory limit.
Error Message [fielddata] Data too large, data for [_id] would be [6194394308/5.7gb], which is larger than the limit of [6190792704/5.7gb].

Note: This is an example error message.

Recommended action: Increase the value of indices.breaker.fielddata.limit in elasticsearch.yml.


Content too long exception from the Elasticsearch query.

Probable cause The length of the document being returned by the Elasticsearch query exceeds 100 MB.
Error Message Entity content is too long [224161559] for the configured buffer limit [104857600].

Note: This is an example error message.

Recommended action: Increase the value of http.max_content_length in elasticsearch.yml.



Revision History

Refer to the following table for the list of key updates made to this page:

Date Release Description of Change
Jun-09-2022 NA New document.

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