Before you begin reading this guide, we recommend you run Elasticsearch Error Check-Up which analyzes 2 JSON files to detect many errors.
Briefly, this error occurs when Elasticsearch is unable to execute a bulk request, which can be due to a variety of issues, such as problems with the bulk request format or problems with the data being indexed. To resolve this issue, you can try to reformat the bulk request or check the data being indexed for errors.
To easily locate the root cause and resolve this issue try AutoOps for Elasticsearch & OpenSearch. It diagnoses problems by analyzing hundreds of metrics collected by a lightweight agent and offers guidance for resolving them.
This guide will help you check for common problems that cause the log ” Failed to execute bulk request . ” to appear. To understand the issues related to this log, read the explanation below about the following Elasticsearch concepts: bulk, handler and request.
Overview
In Elasticsearch, when using the Bulk API it is possible to perform many write operations in a single API call, which increases the indexing speed. Using the Bulk API is more efficient than sending multiple separate requests. This can be done for the following four actions:
- Index
- Update
- Create
- Delete
Examples
The bulk request below will index a document, delete another document, and update an existing document.
POST _bulk
{ "index" : { "_index" : "myindex", "_id" : "1" } }
{ "field1" : "value" }
{ "delete" : { "_index" : "myindex", "_id" : "2" } }
{ "update" : {"_id" : "1", "_index" : "myindex"} }
{ "doc" : {"field2" : "value5"} }Notes
- Bulk API is useful when you need to index data streams that can be queued up and indexed in batches of hundreds or thousands, such as logs.
- There is no correct number of actions or limits to perform on a single bulk call, but you will need to figure out the optimum number by experimentation, given the cluster size, number of nodes, hardware specs etc.
Log Context
Log “Failed to execute bulk request {}.” classname is BulkRequestHandler.java.
We extracted the following from Elasticsearch source code for those seeking an in-depth context :
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
Thread.currentThread().interrupt();
logger.info(() -> new ParameterizedMessage("Bulk request {} has been cancelled."; executionId); e);
listener.afterBulk(executionId; bulkRequest; e);
} catch (Exception e) {
logger.warn(() -> new ParameterizedMessage("Failed to execute bulk request {}."; executionId); e);
listener.afterBulk(executionId; bulkRequest; e);
} finally {
if (bulkRequestSetupSuccessful == false) { // if we fail on client.bulk() release the semaphore
toRelease.run();
}
