WARNING: Version 5.5 of Elasticsearch has passed its EOL date.
This documentation is no longer being maintained and may be removed. If you are running this version, we strongly advise you to upgrade. For the latest information, see the current release documentation.
Reindex to upgrade
editReindex to upgrade
editElasticsearch is able to use indices created in the previous major version only. For instance, Elasticsearch 5.x can use indices created in Elasticsearch 2.x, but not those created in Elasticsearch 1.x or before.
Elasticsearch 5.x nodes will fail to start in the presence of too old indices.
If you are running an Elasticsearch 2.x cluster which contains indices that were created before 2.x, you will either need to delete those old indices or to reindex them before upgrading to 5.x. See Reindex in place.
If you are running an Elasticsearch 1.x cluster, you have two options:
- First upgrade to Elasticsearch 2.4.x, reindex the old indices, then upgrade to 5.x. See Reindex in place.
- Create a new 5.x cluster and use reindex-from-remote to import indices directly from the 1.x cluster. See Upgrading with reindex-from-remote.
Reindex in place
editThe easiest way to reindex old (1.x) indices in place is to use the Elasticsearch Migration Plugin. You will need to upgrade to Elasticsearch 2.3.x or 2.4.x first.
The reindex utility provided in the migration plugin does the following:
-
Creates a new index with the Elasticsearch version appended to the old index
name (e.g.
my_index-2.4.1
), copying the mappings and settings from the old index. Refresh is disabled on the new index and the number of replicas is set to0
for efficient reindexing. - Sets the old index to read only to ensure that no data is written to the old index.
- Reindexes all documents from the old index to the new index.
-
Resets the
refresh_interval
andnumber_of_replicas
to the values used in the old index, and waits for the index to become green. - Adds any aliases that existed on the old index to the new index.
- Deletes the old index.
-
Adds an alias to the new index with the old index name, e.g. alias
my_index
points to indexmy_index-2.4.1
.
At the end of this process, you will have a new 2.x index which can be used by an Elasticsearch 5.x cluster.
Upgrading with reindex-from-remote
editIf you are running a 1.x cluster and would like to migrate directly to 5.x without first migrating to 2.x, you can do so using reindex-from-remote.
Elasticsearch includes backwards compatibility code that allows indices from the previous major version to be upgraded to the current major version. By moving directly from Elasticsearch 1.x to 5.x, you will have to solve any backwards compatibility issues yourself.
You will need to set up a 5.x cluster alongside your existing 1.x cluster. The 5.x cluster needs to have access to the REST API of the 1.x cluster.
For each 1.x index that you want to transfer to the 5.x cluster, you will need to:
-
Create a new index in 5.x with the appropriate mappings and settings. Set
the
refresh_interval
to-1
and setnumber_of_replicas
to0
for faster reindexing. - Use reindex-from-remote to pull documents from the 1.x index into the new 5.x index.
-
If you run the reindex job in the background (with
wait_for_completion
set tofalse
), the reindex request will return atask_id
which can be used to monitor progress of the reindex job in the task API:GET _tasks/TASK_ID
. -
Once reindex has completed, set the
refresh_interval
andnumber_of_replicas
to the desired values (the defaults are30s
and1
respectively). - Once the new index has finished replication, you can delete the old index.
The 5.x cluster can start out small, and you can gradually move nodes from the 1.x cluster to the 5.x cluster as you migrate indices across.