Circuit breaker trips
Circuit breakers on the affected node are tripping often enough to flag a stability risk. Tripped breakers reject search or indexing requests, so clients see errors instead of slow responses.
For a complete list of insights, refer to AutoOps insights.
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Component | Elasticsearch |
| Severity | Medium |
| Scope | Node |
| Domains | performance, memory, stability |
You can customize these settings to adjust when AutoOps detects this event and presents the insight. Refer to AutoOps event settings for details.
The default customization settings are:
| Setting | Type | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Request tripped circuit breaker threshold | Integer | 20 |
| Field data tripped circuit breaker threshold | Integer | 20 |
| Parent tripped circuit breaker threshold | Integer | 1 |
The following is an example of what you might see when this insight is triggered. Real insights use live data and links from your deployment or cluster.
Circuit breaker trip counts are high on es-data-01. Affected node(s): es-data-01 and es-data-02.
fielddata trips: 20
AutoOps shows different recommendations depending on how their conditions match your deployment or cluster.
Tune request circuit breaker
Condition: Shown when the request circuit breaker tripped.
Review why the request circuit breaker is tripping on es-data-01, then adjust indices.breaker.request.limit only if heap and workload justify it. The action below sets the limit to 60% (the default).
PUT _cluster/settings
{
"persistent": {
"indices.breaker.request.limit": "60%"
}
}
Requires the manage cluster privilege. Requires Elasticsearch 8.0.0 or later. This action changes cluster or index configuration.
Tune fielddata circuit breaker limit
Condition: Shown when the field data circuit breaker tripped.
The fielddata circuit breaker is tripping often on https://localhost:9200. Prefer keyword fields or doc values over fielddata; only raise indices.breaker.fielddata.limit (default 40%) if justified. Use the action below.
PUT _cluster/settings
{
"persistent": {
"indices.breaker.fielddata.limit": "40%"
}
}
Requires the manage cluster privilege. Requires Elasticsearch 8.0.0 or later. This action changes cluster or index configuration.
Tune parent circuit breaker
Condition: Shown when the parent circuit breaker tripped.
Review why the parent circuit breaker is tripping on es-data-01, then adjust indices.breaker.total.limit only if capacity and heap usage justify it. The action below sets the limit to 95% (the default when real-memory accounting is enabled).
PUT _cluster/settings
{
"persistent": {
"indices.breaker.total.limit": "95%"
}
}
Requires the manage cluster privilege. Requires Elasticsearch 8.0.0 or later. This action changes cluster or index configuration.
Tune in-flight requests circuit breaker limit
Condition: Shown when the in-flight requests circuit breaker tripped.
The in-flight requests circuit breaker is tripping often on es-data-01. Review heap and request patterns before changing network.breaker.inflight_requests.limit (default 100%). Use the action below to update the limit.
PUT _cluster/settings
{
"persistent": {
"network.breaker.inflight_requests.limit": "100%"
}
}
Requires the manage cluster privilege. Requires Elasticsearch 8.0.0 or later. This action changes cluster or index configuration.
Elasticsearch uses circuit breakers to estimate memory needed for operations and to reject work before the JVM runs out of heap. Common breakers cover request memory, field data, parent (total) limits, and in-flight requests.
When a breaker trips, the related search or indexing request fails with an exception. Frequent trips usually point to high-memory queries, heavy aggregations, costly mappings or field data, large request payloads, or excessive script compilation. If trips continue, applications see recurring failures and the node stays under memory pressure.