Thread Pool

edit

A node holds several thread pools in order to improve how threads memory consumption are managed within a node. Many of these pools also have queues associated with them, which allow pending requests to be held instead of discarded.

There are several thread pools, but the important ones include:

index
For index/delete operations. Defaults to fixed with a size of # of available processors, queue_size of 200.
search
For count/search operations. Defaults to fixed with a size of int((# of available_processors * 3) / 2) + 1, queue_size of 1000.
suggest
For suggest operations. Defaults to fixed with a size of # of available processors, queue_size of 1000.
get
For get operations. Defaults to fixed with a size of # of available processors, queue_size of 1000.
bulk
For bulk operations. Defaults to fixed with a size of # of available processors, queue_size of 50.
percolate
For percolate operations. Defaults to fixed with a size of # of available processors, queue_size of 1000.
snapshot
For snapshot/restore operations. Defaults to scaling with a keep-alive of 5m and a size of min(5, (# of available processors)/2).
warmer
For segment warm-up operations. Defaults to scaling with a keep-alive of 5m and a size of min(5, (# of available processors)/2).
refresh
For refresh operations. Defaults to scaling with a keep-alive of 5m and a size of min(10, (# of available processors)/2).
listener
Mainly for java client executing of action when listener threaded is set to true. Default size of (# of available processors)/2, max at 10.

Changing a specific thread pool can be done by setting its type and specific type parameters, for example, changing the index thread pool to have more threads:

threadpool:
    index:
        type: fixed
        size: 30

you can update threadpool settings live using Cluster Update Settings.

Thread pool types

edit

The following are the types of thread pools that can be used and their respective parameters:

cache

edit

The cache thread pool is an unbounded thread pool that will spawn a thread if there are pending requests. Here is an example of how to set it:

threadpool:
    index:
        type: cached

fixed

edit

The fixed thread pool holds a fixed size of threads to handle the requests with a queue (optionally bounded) for pending requests that have no threads to service them.

The size parameter controls the number of threads, and defaults to the number of cores times 5.

The queue_size allows to control the size of the queue of pending requests that have no threads to execute them. By default, it is set to -1 which means its unbounded. When a request comes in and the queue is full, it will abort the request.

threadpool:
    index:
        type: fixed
        size: 30
        queue_size: 1000

scaling

edit

The scaling thread pool holds a dynamic number of threads. This number is proportional to the workload and varies between 1 and the value of the size parameter.

The keep_alive parameter determines how long a thread should be kept around in the thread pool without it doing any work.

threadpool:
    warmer:
        type: scaling
        size: 8
        keep_alive: 2m

Processors setting

edit

The number of processors is automatically detected, and the thread pool settings are automatically set based on it. Sometimes, the number of processors are wrongly detected, in such cases, the number of processors can be explicitly set using the processors setting.

In order to check the number of processors detected, use the nodes info API with the os flag.