# Elasticsearch stops working, says failed to update shard information

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-stops-working-says-failed-to-update-shard-information/188617>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [July 3, 2019, 6:15am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-stops-working-says-failed-to-update-shard-information/188617 "2019-07-03T06:15:45Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![subhas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ec9cab/32.png) [@subhas](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/subhas)\
**Post date:** [July 3, 2019, 6:15am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-stops-working-says-failed-to-update-shard-information/188617/1 "2019-07-03T06:15:45Z")

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I am running elasticsearch 6.8.1 on centos 7. Out of a sudden, elasticsearch service stopped working giving the following error in the elasticsearch.log file. I restarted the service then it is working normally. But how do I avoid this error in future? Is there any settings to turn off this auto update? Thanks in advance.

```
[2019-07-03T02:11:32,687][WARN][o.e.c.InternalClusterInfoService] [ZqPNVKY] Failed to update shard information for ClusterInfoUpdateJob within 15s timeout
[2019-07-03T02:11:32,684][ERROR][o.e.b.ElasticsearchUncaughtExceptionHandler] [ZqPNVKY] fatal error in thread [elasticsearch[ZqPNVKY][search][T#2]], exiting
java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space
        at org.apache.lucene.util.ArrayUtil.growExact(ArrayUtil.java:302) ~[lucene-core-7.7.0.jar:7.7.0 8c831daf4eb41153c25ddb152501ab5bae3ea3d5 - jimczi - 2019-02-04 23:16:28]
```

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**Author:** ![Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/christian_dahlqvist/32/4617_2.png) [@Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Christian_Dahlqvist)\
**Post date:** [July 3, 2019, 7:04am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-stops-working-says-failed-to-update-shard-information/188617/2 "2019-07-03T07:04:13Z")

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You seem to have run out of heap space, so either reduce or optimise how much you use or add more heap to the cluster. If you provide more details on your use case and setup someone might be able to assist, but now there is not much to go on.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![subhas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ec9cab/32.png) [@subhas](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/subhas)\
**Post date:** [July 3, 2019, 7:31am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-stops-working-says-failed-to-update-shard-information/188617/3 "2019-07-03T07:31:53Z")

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Thanks @Christian_Dahlqvist How can we avoid this automatic update process from happening?

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**Author:** ![Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/christian_dahlqvist/32/4617_2.png) [@Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Christian_Dahlqvist)\
**Post date:** [July 3, 2019, 7:45am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-stops-working-says-failed-to-update-shard-information/188617/4 "2019-07-03T07:45:22Z")

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How many indices and shards do you have in the cluster? What is the size and hardware specification of the cluster?

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**Author:** ![subhas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ec9cab/32.png) [@subhas](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/subhas)\
**Post date:** [July 24, 2019, 12:27pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-stops-working-says-failed-to-update-shard-information/188617/5 "2019-07-24T12:27:27Z")

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Here is the information -

> ```
> GET _cluster/health
> {
> "cluster_name" : "my-first-cluster",
> "status" : "red",
> "timed_out" : false,
> "number_of_nodes" : 1,
> "number_of_data_nodes" : 1,
> "active_primary_shards" : 2291,
> "active_shards" : 2291,
> "relocating_shards" : 0,
> "initializing_shards" : 0,
> "unassigned_shards" : 3181,
> "delayed_unassigned_shards" : 0,
> "number_of_pending_tasks" : 0,
> "number_of_in_flight_fetch" : 0,
> "task_max_waiting_in_queue_millis" : 0,
> "active_shards_percent_as_number" : 41.86769005847953
> }
> 
> ```

The cluster is sitting on a centos server with 2 vCPU 8GB RAM and 50GB hard drive.  
Thanks in advance.

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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:** [August 21, 2019, 12:27pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-stops-working-says-failed-to-update-shard-information/188617/6 "2019-08-21T12:27:31Z")

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