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High cluster pending tasks

ECH

Elastic Cloud Hosted lets you manage and configure one or more deployments of the versioned Elastic Stack, hosted on Elastic Cloud.

Availability

  • Generally available

    This functionality is generally available and ready for production usage.

ECK

Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes extends Kubernetes orchestration capabilities to allow you to deploy and manage components of the Elastic Stack.

Availability

  • Generally available

    This functionality is generally available and ready for production usage.

This documentation corresponds to the latest patch available for each minor version. If you're not using the latest patch, check the release notes for changes.

ECE

Elastic Cloud Enterprise is a self-managed orchestration platform for deploying and managing the Elastic Stack at scale.

Availability

  • Generally available

    This functionality is generally available and ready for production usage.

This documentation corresponds to the latest patch available for each minor version. If you're not using the latest patch, check the release notes for changes.

Self-managed

Self-managed deployments are Elastic Stack deployments managed without the assistance of an orchestrator.

Availability

  • Generally available

    This functionality is generally available and ready for production usage.

This documentation corresponds to the latest patch available for each minor version. If you're not using the latest patch, check the release notes for changes.

A large backlog of cluster management tasks is waiting to run. The cluster cannot apply metadata changes fast enough for current load.

Note

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

Field Value
Component Elasticsearch
Severity High
Scope Cluster
Domains performance, cluster-health

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
Cluster pending tasks threshold Integer 500
Consecutive samples required above threshold Integer 6
Tip

Raising these thresholds reduces noise but delays detection. Lowering them triggers the insight sooner but can increase alerts during minor blips.

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.

There are 12 pending tasks in the cluster management queue, sustained for over 5 consecutive samplings.

Note

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

Review pending cluster tasks

Condition: Always shown for this insight.

Review pending cluster tasks to see what the master is waiting on. Use the action below to call the pending tasks API.

JSON
GET _cluster/pending_tasks
Note

Requires the manage cluster privilege. Requires Elasticsearch 8.0.0 or later. This action is read-only.

When the cluster management queue grows faster than the elected master can apply changes, pending tasks accumulate. Each task represents a cluster-state update that has not yet been executed. Sustained high pending task counts often signal rapid cluster-state churn or a master that cannot keep pace with current load. Metadata changes can lag until the backlog clears.

Get the pending cluster tasks