Diagnosing & Repairing Elasticsearch Indices

Kacper Bąk
3 min readAug 18, 2023

Elasticsearch, a widely renowned search and analytics engine, is as powerful as it is intricate. With power, though, comes responsibility: understanding, maintaining, and troubleshooting its indices. If you’ve found yourself here, chances are, you’re in need of a handy guide on how to diagnose and repair Elasticsearch indices. Well, you’re in luck!

Elasticsearch logo — a powerful search and analytics engine.
Elasticsearch logo — a powerful search and analytics engine.

Understanding the Challenge

Upon inheriting an Elasticsearch cluster, it’s not uncommon to stumble upon indices that aren’t in a green state. These indices can sometimes transition into a yellow or even a dreaded red state. So, what should you do when confronted with such a scenario?

Tools and Resources at Your Disposal

Before diving deep into the solution, let’s first acquaint ourselves with the tools and resources you might need:

Kibana Instance: An essential visualization tool, Kibana can help diagnose and manage Elasticsearch indices. It’s generally found in the master node.

SSH (Secure Shell): A cryptographic network protocol for operating network services securely.

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