Circuit Breaking Exception
Severity:
Critical
Elasticsearch Version:
8.5.0
Problem
Elasticsearch circuit breaker exceptions causing request rejections
Root Cause
Excessive memory usage leading to circuit breaker triggers due to high query load or large aggregations
How to Detect
Symptoms
- Request rejections with circuit breaker exceptions in logs
- High JVM heap usage
- Increased circuit breaker tripped events
Commands
curl -XGET 'localhost:9200/_nodes/stats/jvm,breakers' | jq '.'
curl -XGET 'localhost:9200/_cat/nodes?v&h=ip,heapPercent,breakers' | grep -i 'breaker'Remediation Steps
- Identify and optimize heavy queries or aggregations
- Increase circuit breaker limits via index settings if appropriate
- Add more nodes or scale existing nodes to distribute load
- Implement query rate limiting or throttling
- Monitor JVM heap and circuit breaker metrics post-adjustments
Prevention
- Optimize query patterns to reduce memory consumption
- Configure circuit breaker thresholds appropriately for workload
- Implement resource monitoring and alerting
- Scale Elasticsearch cluster horizontally as needed
Production Example
curl -XPUT 'localhost:9200/_cluster/settings' -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{"persistent": {"indices.breaker.total.limit": "70%"}}'