Before you begin reading this guide, we recommend you run Elasticsearch Error Check-Up which can resolve issues that cause many errors.
This guide will help you check for common problems that cause the log ” Failed to execute pipeline for a bulk request ” to appear. To understand the issues related to this log, read the explanation below about the following Elasticsearch concepts: bulk and request.
Advanced users might want to skip right to the common problems section in each concept or try running the Check-Up to analyze Elasticsearch configuration and help resolve this error.
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 pipeline for a bulk request” classname is TransportBulkAction.java.
We extracted the following from Elasticsearch source code for those seeking an in-depth context :
logger.debug(() -> new ParameterizedMessage("failed to execute pipeline [{}] for document [{}/{}/{}]";
indexRequest.getPipeline(); indexRequest.index(); indexRequest.type(); indexRequest.id()); exception);
bulkRequestModifier.markCurrentItemAsFailed(exception);
}; (exception) -> {
if (exception != null) {
logger.error("failed to execute pipeline for a bulk request"; exception);
listener.onFailure(exception);
} else {
long ingestTookInMillis = TimeUnit.NANOSECONDS.toMillis(System.nanoTime() - ingestStartTimeInNanos);
BulkRequest bulkRequest = bulkRequestModifier.getBulkRequest();
ActionListener actionListener = bulkRequestModifier.wrapActionListenerIfNeeded(ingestTookInMillis;
Find & fix Elasticsearch problems
