A cluster restart may be necessary for purposes such as configuration updates or fault recovery. CSS Elasticsearch clusters support two restart modes: quick restart and rolling restart. To balance cluster availability and restart efficiency, select the mode best suited to your operational requirements.
Restart Mode | Quick Restart | Rolling Restart |
|---|---|---|
Impact | High: The cluster becomes unavailable for both read and write operations for the entire duration of the upgrade. | Low: Only the node that is being restarted is unavailable. The cluster as a whole remains available all the time. |
How It Works | Parallel operations: All selected nodes are stopped and restarted at once. | Serial operations: Restart node A > Wait for it to recover > Restart node B > Wait for it to recover, and so on |
Data Security | There is risk of data loss if you forcibly restart nodes that are still serving write requests. | Data security is guaranteed as the system automatically handles shard allocation. |
Time Required | All nodes are restarted simultaneously. The total restart time is typically shorter. | The selected nodes are restarted one at a time. After the first node, each node can restart only after the previous node has fully recovered. This process takes longer. |
When to Use | Use this mode in development or testing environments, where clusters are completely deadlocked, or where service interruption is acceptable. | Use this model in production environments, where high availability takes top priority and clusters store large amounts of data. |
Node Quantity | There is no limit on the number of nodes. | There are at least three nodes. |
Clusters whose Task Status is Frozen or that have ongoing tasks cannot be restarted.
Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
Restart Mode | Select Quick Restart. |
Select By | Select Node type or Node name.
|
Operation Value | Select one or more node types or a node name, depending on the setting of Select By. |
The cluster will be unavailable for the entire duration of a quick restart.
Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
Restart Mode | Select Rolling Restart. This option is unavailable when the cluster has fewer than three nodes. |
Select By | The default value is Node type. |
Value | Select node types for the restart.
|
During a rolling restart, after the last node is restarted, the system waits for the cluster to recover (health status turns green/yellow). If the cluster has extremely large indexes or index shards are still being restored, the task will be stuck in Restarting for a long time. You can run the GET _cat/recovery?v command to check the shard recovery progress.
The rolling restart option is unavailable for clusters with just two nodes, but you can achieve a similar process manually: