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Circuit Breaking Exception

Severity: Critical
Elasticsearch Version: 8.5.0

Problem

Requests are being rejected due to Elasticsearch circuit breaker exceptions.

Root Cause

Excessive memory usage leading to circuit breaker tripping, often caused by heavy queries or insufficient heap size.

How to Detect

Symptoms

  • Circuit breaker exceptions in logs
  • High JVM heap usage
  • Increased response times
  • Request rejections

Commands

GET /_nodes/stats/jvm,breakers
GET /_cluster/health
GET /_cat/nodes?v&h=heapPercent,circuitBreaker

Remediation Steps

  1. Identify and optimize heavy queries or aggregations
  2. Increase JVM heap size if hardware permits
  3. Monitor circuit breaker thresholds and adjust settings if necessary
  4. Implement index lifecycle policies to reduce shard sizes
  5. Restart nodes during low traffic periods if configuration changes are made

Prevention

  • Regularly monitor JVM heap and circuit breaker stats
  • Optimize query patterns and avoid large aggregations
  • Configure appropriate shard sizes and number of shards
  • Implement resource limits and alerts for JVM and circuit breaker thresholds

Production Example

curl -XGET 'localhost:9200/_nodes/stats/jvm,breakers'
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