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Elastic Docs ›Elasticsearch Guide [6.8] ›Upgrade Elasticsearch

Reindex before upgrading

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Reindex before upgrading

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Elasticsearch can read indices created in the previous major version. Older indices must be reindexed or deleted. Elasticsearch 6.x can use indices created in Elasticsearch 5.x, but not those created in Elasticsearch 2.x or before. Elasticsearch 5.x can use indices created in Elasticsearch 2.x, but not those created in 1.x or before.

Elasticsearch nodes will fail to start if incompatible indices are present.

To upgrade an Elasticsearch 5.x cluster that contains indices created in 2.x, you must reindex or delete them before upgrading to 6.x. For more information, see Reindex in place.

To upgrade an Elasticsearch cluster running 2.x, you have two options:

  • Perform a full cluster restart upgrade to 5.6, reindex the 2.x indices, then perform a rolling upgrade to 6.x. If your Elasticsearch 2.x cluster contains indices that were created before 2.x, you must either delete or reindex them before upgrading to 5.6. For more information about upgrading from 2.x to 5.6, see Upgrading Elasticsearch in the Elasticsearch 5.6 Reference.
  • Create a new 6.x cluster and reindex from remote to import indices directly from the 2.x cluster.

To upgrade an Elasticsearch 1.x cluster, you have two options:

Upgrading time-based indices

If you use time-based indices, you likely won’t need to carry pre-5.x indices forward to 6.x. Data in time-based indices generally becomes less useful as time passes and are deleted as they age past your retention period.

Unless you have an unusually long retention period, you can just wait to upgrade to 6.x until all of your pre-5.x indices have been deleted.

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