> [Introduced](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/merge_requests/109 "Elasticsearch Merge Request") in GitLab [Starter](https://about.gitlab.com/pricing/) 8.4. Support
> for [Amazon Elasticsearch](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticsearch-service/latest/developerguide/es-gsg.html) was [introduced](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/merge_requests/1305) in GitLab
Elasticsearch is _not_ included in the Omnibus packages. You will have to
install it yourself whether you are using the Omnibus package or installed
GitLab from source. Providing detailed information on installing Elasticsearch
is out of the scope of this document.
Once the data is added to the database or repository and [Elasticsearch is
enabled in the admin area](#enabling-elasticsearch) the search index will be
updated automatically. Elasticsearch can be installed on the same machine as
GitLab or on a separate server, or you can use the [Amazon Elasticsearch](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticsearch-service/latest/developerguide/es-gsg.html)
service.
You can follow the steps as described in the [official web site](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/install-elasticsearch.html "Elasticsearch installation documentation") or
use the packages that are available for your OS.
## Elasticsearch repository indexer (beta)
In order to improve elasticsearch indexing performance, GitLab has made available a [new indexer written in Go](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-elasticsearch-indexer).
This will replace the included Ruby indexer in the future but should be considered beta software for now, so there may be some bugs.
If you would like to use it, please follow the instructions below.
### Installation
First, we need to install some dependencies, then we'll build and install
the indexer itself.
#### Dependencies
This project relies on [ICU](http://site.icu-project.org/) for text encoding,
therefore we need to ensure the development packages for your platform are
The `gitlab-elasticsearch-indexer` will be installed to `/usr/local/bin`.
You can change the installation path with the `PREFIX` env variable.
Please remember to pass the `-E` flag to `sudo` if you do so.
Example:
```sh
PREFIX=/usr sudo -E make install
```
Once installed, enable it under your instance's elasticsearch settings explained [below](#enabling-elasticsearch).
## System Requirements
Elasticsearch requires additional resources in excess of those documented in the
[GitLab system requirements](../install/requirements.md). These will vary by
installation size, but you should ensure **at least** an additional **8 GiB of RAM**
for each Elasticsearch node, per the [official guidelines](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/guide/current/hardware.html).
Keep in mind, this is the **minimum requirements** as per Elasticsearch. For
production instances, they recommend considerably more resources.
Storage requirements also vary based on the installation side, but as a rule of
thumb, you should allocate the total size of your production database, **plus**
two-thirds of the total size of your git repositories. Efforts to reduce this
total are being tracked in this epic: [gitlab-org&153](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/153).
## Enabling Elasticsearch
In order to enable Elasticsearch, you need to have admin access. Go to
**Admin > Settings > Integrations** and find the "Elasticsearch" section.
The following Elasticsearch settings are available:
| Parameter | Description |
| --------- | ----------- |
| `Elasticsearch indexing` | Enables/disables Elasticsearch indexing. You may want to enable indexing but disable search in order to give the index time to be fully completed, for example. Also, keep in mind that this option doesn't have any impact on existing data, this only enables/disables background indexer which tracks data changes. So by enabling this you will not get your existing data indexed, use special rake task for that as explained in [Adding GitLab's data to the Elasticsearch index](#adding-gitlabs-data-to-the-elasticsearch-index). |
| `Use the new repository indexer (beta)` | Perform repository indexing using [GitLab Elasticsearch Indexer](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-elasticsearch-indexer). |
| `Search with Elasticsearch enabled` | Enables/disables using Elasticsearch in search. |
| `URL` | The URL to use for connecting to Elasticsearch. Use a comma-separated list to support clustering (e.g., "http://host1, https://host2:9200"). If your Elasticsearch instance is password protected, pass the `username:password` in the URL (e.g., `http://<username>:<password>@<elastic_host>:9200/`). |
| `Number of Elasticsearch shards` | Elasticsearch indexes are split into multiple shards for performance reasons. In general, larger indexes need to have more shards. Changes to this value do not take effect until the index is recreated. You can read more about tradeoffs in the [Elasticsearch documentation](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/indices-create-index.html#create-index-settings) |
| `Number of Elasticsearch replicas` | Each Elasticsearch shard can have a number of replicas. These are a complete copy of the shard, and can provide increased query performance or resilience against hardware failure. Increasing this value will greatly increase total disk space required by the index. |
| `Limit namespaces and projects that can be indexed` | Enabling this will allow you to select namespaces and projects to index. All other namespaces and projects will use database search instead. Please note that if you enable this option but do not select any namespaces or projects, none will be indexed. [Read more below](#limiting-namespaces-and-projects).
| `Using AWS hosted Elasticsearch with IAM credentials` | Sign your Elasticsearch requests using [AWS IAM authorization](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/id_credentials_access-keys.html) or [AWS EC2 Instance Profile Credentials](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/codedeploy/latest/userguide/getting-started-create-iam-instance-profile.html#getting-started-create-iam-instance-profile-cli). The policies must be configured to allow `es:*` actions. |
| `AWS Region` | The AWS region your Elasticsearch service is located in. |
- This determines the overall status of the indexing. It is done by counting the total number of indexed projects, dividing by a count of the total number of projects, then multiplying by 100.
| `UPDATE_INDEX` | Boolean | Tells the indexer to overwrite any existing index data (true/false). |
| `ID_TO` | Integer | Tells the indexer to only index projects less than or equal to the value. |
| `ID_FROM` | Integer | Tells the indexer to only index projects greater than or equal to the value. |
### Indexing a specific project
Because the `ID_TO` and `ID_FROM` environment variables use the `or equal to` comparison, you can index only one project by using both these variables with the same project ID number:
Indexing project repositories...I, [2019-03-04T21:27:03.083410 #3384] INFO -- : Indexing GitLab User / test (ID=33)...
I, [2019-03-04T21:27:05.215266 #3384] INFO -- : Indexing GitLab User / test (ID=33) is done!
```
## Elasticsearch Index Scopes
When performing a search, the GitLab index will use the following scopes:
| Scope Name | What it searches |
| ---------------- | ---------------------- |
| `commits` | Commit data |
| `projects` | Project data (default) |
| `blobs` | Code |
| `issues` | Issue data |
| `merge_requests` | Merge Request data |
| `milestones` | Milestone data |
| `notes` | Note data |
| `snippets` | Snippet data |
| `wiki_blobs` | Wiki contents |
## Tuning
### Deleted documents
Whenever a change or deletion is made to an indexed GitLab object (a merge request description is changed, a file is deleted from the master branch in a repository, a project is deleted, etc), a document in the index is deleted. However, since these are "soft" deletes, the overall number of "deleted documents", and therefore wasted space, increases. Elasticsearch does intelligent merging of segments in order to remove these deleted documents. However, depending on the amount and type of activity in your GitLab installation, it's possible to see as much as 50% wasted space in the index.
In general, we recommend simply letting Elasticseach merge and reclaim space automatically, with the default settings. From [Lucene's Handling of Deleted Documents](https://www.elastic.co/blog/lucenes-handling-of-deleted-documents "Lucene's Handling of Deleted Documents"), _"Overall, besides perhaps decreasing the maximum segment size, it is best to leave Lucene's defaults as-is and not fret too much about when deletes are reclaimed."_
However, some larger installations may wish to tune the merge policy settings:
- Consider reducing the `index.merge.policy.max_merged_segment` size from the default 5 GB to maybe 2 GB or 3 GB. Merging only happens when a segment has at least 50% deletions. Smaller segment sizes will allow merging to happen more frequently.
```bash
curl --request PUT http://localhost:9200/gitlab-production/_settings --data '{
"index" : {
"merge.policy.max_merged_segment": "2gb"
}
}'
```
- You can also adjust `index.merge.policy.reclaim_deletes_weight`, which controls how aggressively deletions are targeted. But this can lead to costly merge decisions, so we recommend not changing this unless you understand the tradeoffs.
```bash
curl --request PUT http://localhost:9200/gitlab-production/_settings --data '{
"index" : {
"merge.policy.reclaim_deletes_weight": "3.0"
}
}'
```
- Do not do a [force merge](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/indices-forcemerge.html "Force Merge") to remove deleted documents. A warning in the [documentation](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/indices-forcemerge.html "Force Merge") states that this can lead to very large segments that may never get reclaimed, and can also cause significant performance or availability issues.
## Troubleshooting
Here are some common pitfalls and how to overcome them:
- **How can I verify my GitLab instance is using Elasticsearch?**
The easiest method is via the rails console (`sudo gitlab-rails console`) by running the following:
```ruby
u = User.find_by_username('your-username')
s = SearchService.new(u, {:search => 'search_term'})
pp s.search_objects.class.name
```
If you see `Elasticsearch::Model::Response::Records`, you are using Elasticsearch.
- **I updated GitLab and now I can't find anything**
We continuously make updates to our indexing strategies and aim to support
newer versions of Elasticsearch. When indexing changes are made, it may
be necessary for you to [reindex](#adding-gitlabs-data-to-the-elasticsearch-index) after updating GitLab.
- **I indexed all the repositories but I can't find anything**
Make sure you indexed all the database data [as stated above](#adding-gitlabs-data-to-the-elasticsearch-index).
Beyond that, check via the [Elasticsearch Search API](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/search-search.html) to see if the data shows up on the Elasticsearch side.
If it shows up via the [Elasticsearch Search API](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/search-search.html), check that it shows up via the rails console (`sudo gitlab-rails console`):
```ruby
u = User.find_by_username('your-username')
s = SearchService.new(u, {:search => 'search_term', :scope => ‘blobs’})
pp s.search_objects.to_a
```
See [Elasticsearch Index Scopes](elasticsearch.md#elasticsearch-index-scopes) for more information on searching for specific types of data.
- **I indexed all the repositories but then switched elastic search servers and now I can't find anything**
You will need to re-run all the rake tasks to re-index the database, repositories, and wikis.
- **The indexing process is taking a very long time**
"reason": "Can't specify parent if no parent field has been configured"
}],
"type": "illegal_argument_exception",
"reason": "Can't specify parent if no parent field has been configured"
},
"status": 400
}):
```
This is because we changed the index mapping in GitLab 8.12 and the old indexes should be removed and built from scratch again,
see details in the [8-11-to-8-12 update guide](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/blob/master/doc/update/8.11-to-8.12.md#11-elasticsearch-index-update-if-you-currently-use-elasticsearch).
If you have this exception (just like in the case above but the actual message is different) please check if you have the correct Elasticsearch version and you met the other [requirements](#system-requirements).
There is also an easy way to check it automatically with `sudo gitlab-rake gitlab:check` command.
