Shard allocation restricted

Shard allocation is turned off or restricted, so the master cannot place new primaries, recover failed shards, or allocate shards across data nodes as usual. Indices might stay unassigned and new index creation can fail.

Note

For a complete list of insights, refer to AutoOps insights.

Field Value
Component Elasticsearch
Severity Medium
Scope Cluster
Domains configuration, shard-allocation, stability

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.

cluster.routing.allocation.enable is not set to all. Shard allocation is turned off or limited to a subset of shard types.

Note

AutoOps shows different recommendations depending on how their conditions match your deployment or cluster.

Enable shard allocation

Condition: Always shown for this insight.

Reset cluster.routing.allocation.enable so primary and replica shards can allocate to nodes.

				PUT _cluster/settings
					{
  "transient": {
    "cluster.routing.allocation.enable": null
  },
  "persistent": {
    "cluster.routing.allocation.enable": null
  }
}
Note

Requires the manage cluster privilege. Requires Elasticsearch 8.0.0 or later. This action changes cluster or index configuration.

Shard allocation is how Elasticsearch places primary and replica shards on data nodes. Operators sometimes restrict allocation during rolling restarts or other maintenance.

While allocation stays restricted, the master might be cannot create new indices, recover unassigned shards, or restore redundancy after a node failure. Prolonged misconfiguration increases the risk of yellow or red health and data loss after further failures.

Turn allocation back to all as soon as the maintenance window ends so the cluster can recover and place shards normally.