Configuring ElasticSearch to use less memory

elasticsearch.md

What I actually did

/etc/security/limits.conf

elasticsearch hard memlock 100000

/etc/default/elasticsearch

ES_HEAP_SIZE=128m
MAX_LOCKED_MEMORY=100000
ES_JAVA_OPTS=-server

/etc/elasticsearch/elasticsearch.yml

index.number_of_shards: 1
index.number_of_replicas: 0

Advice I read

http://blog.lavoie.sl/2012/09/configure-elasticsearch-on-a-single-host.html (for an old version)

Edit /etc/security/limits.conf and add: elasticsearch hard memlock 100000

Edit the init script: /etc/init.d/elasticsearch
Change ES_HEAP_SIZE to 10-20% of your machine, I used 128m
Change MAX_LOCKED_MEMORY to 100000 Be sure to set it at the same value as 1.1
Change JAVA_OPTS to "-server"

Edit the config file: /etc/elasticsearch/elasticsearch.yml
index.number_of_shards: 1
index.number_of_replicas: 0
index.term_index_interval: 256
index.term_index_divisor: 5
network.host: 127.0.0.1
network.tcp.block: true

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18132719/how-to-change-elasticsearch-max-size

	/etc/security/limits.conf:
	elasticsearch - nofile 65535
	elasticsearch - memlock unlimited

	/etc/default/elasticsearch:
	ES_HEAP_SIZE=512m
	MAX_OPEN_FILES=65535
	MAX_LOCKED_MEMORY=unlimited

	/etc/elasticsearch/elasticsearch.yml:
	bootstrap.mlockall: true

Hey, thx bro

👍

Thanks!

I also found adding a swap to help as well: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-add-swap-on-ubuntu-14-04

nice

You should NEVER add swap to a Elasticsearch node. It will slow down the node.

FYI the path for /etc/default/elasticsearch has changed to /etc/sysconfig/elasticsearch
I am using 1.7.3

I'm using 2.2.0, everything is fine with /etc/default/elasticsearch, ES installed by DEB package in Ubuntu, and from Arch official repository in ArchLinux.

Why when I enable bootstrap.mlockall: true on /etc/elasticsearch/elasticsearch.yaml directly my connection is refused

FYI apparently much of this no longer applies in version >= 5. I found this helpful https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/heap-size.html .

thanx a lot. This really help me with a low memory server only 400MB left for ES.
Before this, i set jvm options max heap size 300MB for ES,but it always goes up to 560MB and cause server Crash.
Now its lower to 323 MB. very nice.

Thanks for the guidance! Nowadays - working very well!