Index recovery prioritization settings

Unallocated shards are recovered in order of priority, whenever possible. Indices are sorted into priority order as follows:

• the optional index.priority setting (higher before lower)
• the index creation date (higher before lower)
• the index name (higher before lower)

This means that, by default, newer indices will be recovered before older indices.

Use the per-index dynamically updatable index.priority setting to customise the index prioritization order. For instance:

PUT index_1
PUT index_2
PUT index_3
{
  "settings": {
    "index.priority": 10
  }
}
PUT index_4
{
  "settings": {
    "index.priority": 5
  }
}

In the above example:

• index_3 will be recovered first because it has the highest index.priority.
• index_4 will be recovered next because it has the next highest priority.
• index_2 will be recovered next because it was created more recently.
• index_1 will be recovered last.

This setting accepts an integer, and can be updated on a live index with the update index settings API:

PUT index_4/_settings
{
  "index.priority": 1
}