# Do I need to open closed indexes when upgrading ES?

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/do-i-need-to-open-closed-indexes-when-upgrading-es/50500>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [May 19, 2016, 10:18pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/do-i-need-to-open-closed-indexes-when-upgrading-es/50500 "2016-05-19T22:18:07Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![anhlqn](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/anhlqn/32/5454_2.png) [@anhlqn](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/anhlqn)\
**Post date:** [May 19, 2016, 10:18pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/do-i-need-to-open-closed-indexes-when-upgrading-es/50500/1 "2016-05-19T22:18:07Z")

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Hi All,

For either minor or major ES upgrade (1.7.0 to 2.0.0 or 2.2.0 to 2.3.3), do I need to reopen closed indexes (lots of them) either before or after the upgrade to have those indexes upgraded to newer version?

Thanks,

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![sweetest.sj](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/858c86/32.png) [@sweetest.sj](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/sweetest.sj)\
**Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 6:17am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/do-i-need-to-open-closed-indexes-when-upgrading-es/50500/2 "2016-05-20T06:17:01Z")

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I recently upgraded es cluster from 1.7.4 to 2.3.2, before upgrade I closed all the indices and opened them up after the upgrade.

Ended up several shards at random being not initialized at all

/\_cluster/reroute?explain gives me this answer

```
                    "unassigned_info": {
                       "reason": "INDEX_REOPENED",
                       "at": "2016-05-20T05:31:35.421Z"
                    }

```

However, when I did upgrade without close/open indices, upgraded es cluster would never finish initializing shards, stuck in recovery process, emitting OOM in a few nodes repeatedly.

Well..this upgrade process is not easy for a medium-sized cluster.

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [July 5, 2017, 10:50pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/do-i-need-to-open-closed-indexes-when-upgrading-es/50500/3 "2017-07-05T22:50:16Z")

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