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How To Solve Issues Related to Log – Unable to process bulk failure

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Updated: Feb-20

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Troubleshooting background

To troubleshoot Elasticsearch log “Unable to process bulk failure” it’s important to understand common problems related to Elasticsearch concepts: bulk, delete, delete-by-query, deletebyquery, plugins. See detailed explanations below complete with common problems, examples and useful tips.

Bulk in Elasticsearch

What it is

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 bellow bulk request 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.

DELETE Elasticsearch API

What is it

DELETE  is an Elasticsearch API which removes a document from a specific index. This API requires an index name and _id document to delete the document. 

Delete a document

DELETE /my_index/_doc/1
Notes
  • A delete request throws 404 error code if the document does not already exist in the index.
  • If you want to delete a set of documents that  matches a query, you need to use delete by query API.

To help troubleshoot related issues we have gathered selected Q&A from the community and issues from Github , please review the following for further information :

1 Bulk Indexing With Java High Level  

2Get The Only Failed Document Respon  

Log Context

Log ”unable to process bulk failure” classname is TransportDeleteByQueryAction.java
We have extracted the following from Elasticsearch source code to get an in-depth context :

                 }

                logger.trace("scrolling document terminated due to scroll request failure [{}]"; scrollId);
                finishHim(scrollId; hasTimedOut(); failure);
            } catch (Throwable t) {
                logger.error("unable to process bulk failure"; t);
                finishHim(scrollId; false; t);
            }
        }

        void finishHim(final String scrollId; boolean scrollTimedOut; Throwable failure) {

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