# After restarting ElasticSearch, a lot of shards unassigned
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/after-restarting-elasticsearch-a-lot-of-shards-unassigned/41978
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [February 17, 2016, 7:15am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/after-restarting-elasticsearch-a-lot-of-shards-unassigned/41978 "2016-02-17T07:15:01Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@rsjavier](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/rsjavier)
#### Post date: [February 17, 2016, 7:15am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/after-restarting-elasticsearch-a-lot-of-shards-unassigned/41978/1 "2016-02-17T07:15:01Z")
The elasticsearch 2.0.0 is running for several months already and creating logstash index per day. When I want to update the elasticsearch.yml, i try to restart it first without any changes and the the problem occurs.
It assigned the first few hundreds then suddenly stopped at around 855 and no more updates happened.
[ec2-user@ip-xx-xx-xx-xx ~]$ curl 'xx-xx-xx-xx:9200/\_cat/health?v'
epoch timestamp cluster status node.total node.data shards pri relo init unassign pending\_tasks max\_task\_wait\_time active\_shards\_percent
1455684626 12:50:26 elasticsearch red 1 1 855 855 0 4 3693 6 315.2ms 18.8%
[ec2-user@ip-xx-xx-xx-xx ~]$ curl 'xx-xx-xx-xx:9200/\_cat/allocation?v'
shards disk.used disk.avail disk.total disk.percent host ip node
859 7.1gb 2.6gb 9.8gb 72 xx-xx-xx-xx xx-xx-xx-xx node1
3693 UNASSIGNED
I tried to search the logs and found some errors
[2016-02-17 14:21:41,743][WARN][cluster.action.shard] [node1] [logstash\_vcm\_apilog-2016.02.16][4] received shard failed for [logstash\_vcm\_apilog-2016.02.16][4], node[NKZ9SbU9S8Cf5jXy5GVMgw], [P], v[20], s[INITIALIZING], a[id=a-1W4A7rTl-W35S4UsOohw], unassigned\_info[[reason=ALLOCATION\_FAILED], at[2016-02-17T06:21:38.627Z], details[failed recovery, failure IndexShardRecoveryException[failed to recovery from gateway]; nested: EngineCreationFailureException[failed to create engine]; nested: FileAlreadyExistsException[/var/lib/elasticsearch/elasticsearch/nodes/0/indices/logstash\_vcm\_apilog-2016.02.16/4/translog/translog-65.ckp]; ]], indexUUID [szBbNKdQQaej-\_kpts4eMg], message [failed recovery], failure [IndexShardRecoveryException[failed to recovery from gateway]; nested: EngineCreationFailureException[failed to create engine]; nested: FileAlreadyExistsException[/var/lib/elasticsearch/elasticsearch/nodes/0/indices/logstash\_vcm\_apilog-2016.02.16/4/translog/translog-65.ckp]; ]
Any idea how to recover the elasticsearch?
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [July 5, 2017, 11:15pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/after-restarting-elasticsearch-a-lot-of-shards-unassigned/41978/2 "2017-07-05T23:15:49Z")