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This guide will help you check for common problems that cause the log ” actual shard is not a primary ” to appear. To understand the issues related to this log, read the explanation below about the following Elasticsearch concepts: replication and shard.
Overview
Replication refers to storing a redundant copy of the data. Starting from version 7.x, Elasticsearch creates one primary shard with a replication factor set to 1. Replicas never get assigned to the same node on which primary shards are assigned, which means you should have at least two nodes in the cluster to assign the replicas. If a primary shard goes down, the replica automatically acts as a primary shard.
What it is used for
Replicas are used to provide high availability and failover. A higher number of replicas is also helpful for faster searches.
Examples
Update replica count
PUT /api-logs/_settings?pretty
{
"index" : {
"number_of_replicas" : 2
}
}Common problems
- By default, new replicas are not assigned to nodes with more than 85% disk usage. Instead, Elasticsearch throws a warning.
- Creating too many replicas may cause a problem if there are not enough resources available in the cluster.
Log Context
Log “actual shard is not a primary”classname is TransportReplicationAction.java We extracted the following from Elasticsearch source code for those seeking an in-depth context :
final ShardRouting shardRouting = indexShard.routingEntry();
// we may end up here if the cluster state used to route the primary is so stale that the underlying
// index shard was replaced with a replica. For example - in a two node cluster; if the primary fails
// the replica will take over and a replica will be assigned to the first node.
if (shardRouting.primary() == false) {
throw new ReplicationOperation.RetryOnPrimaryException(shardId; "actual shard is not a primary " + shardRouting);
}
final String actualAllocationId = shardRouting.allocationId().getId();
if (actualAllocationId.equals(primaryRequest.getTargetAllocationID()) == false) {
throw new ShardNotFoundException(shardId; "expected allocation id [{}] but found [{}]";
primaryRequest.getTargetAllocationID(); actualAllocationId);
Find & fix Elasticsearch problems
