# How to reduce elasticsearch memory usage

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-reduce-elasticsearch-memory-usage/207997>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [November 15, 2019, 6:19am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-reduce-elasticsearch-memory-usage/207997 "2019-11-15T06:19:52Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![lovelly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4af34b/32.png) [@lovelly](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/lovelly)\
**Post date:** [November 15, 2019, 6:19am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-reduce-elasticsearch-memory-usage/207997/1 "2019-11-15T06:19:52Z")

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I use the bulk api to insert a lot of data. Elasticsearch will quickly consume memory and then crash.

elasticsearcg log :  
[2019-11-15T14:13:00,235][INFO][o.e.m.j.JvmGcMonitorService] [es1] [gc][1287] overhead, spent [286ms] collecting in the last [1s]  
[2019-11-15T14:13:05,273][INFO][o.e.m.j.JvmGcMonitorService] [es1] [gc][1292] overhead, spent [280ms] collecting in the last [1s]  
[2019-11-15T14:13:06,274][INFO][o.e.m.j.JvmGcMonitorService] [es1] [gc][1293] overhead, spent [319ms] collecting in the last [1s]  
[2019-11-15T14:13:09,389][INFO][o.e.m.j.JvmGcMonitorService] [es1] [gc][1296] overhead, spent [282ms] collecting in the last [1.1s]  
[2019-11-15T14:13:30,889][INFO][o.e.m.j.JvmGcMonitorService] [es1] [gc][1317] overhead, spent [262ms] collecting in the last [1s]  
[2019-11-15T14:13:35,892][INFO][o.e.m.j.JvmGcMonitorService] [es1] [gc][1322] overhead, spent [280ms] collecting in the last [1s]  
[2019-11-15T14:13:36,960][INFO][o.e.m.j.JvmGcMonitorService] [es1] [gc][1323] overhead, spent [271ms] collecting in the last [1s]  
[2019-11-15T14:13:41,098][INFO][o.e.m.j.JvmGcMonitorService] [es1] [gc][1327] overhead, spent [524ms] collecting in the last [1.1s]  
[2019-11-15T14:13:47,179][INFO][o.e.m.j.JvmGcMonitorService] [es1] [gc][1333] overhead, spent [274ms] collecting in the last [1s]  
[2019-11-15T14:13:55,217][INFO][o.e.m.j.JvmGcMonitorService] [es1] [gc][1341] overhead, spent [295ms] collecting in the last [1s]

Segments memory:  
curl "localhost:9200/\_cat/nodes?v&h=name,port,sm"  
name port sm  
es1 9301 5.8mb  
es2 9302 8mb

machine memory  
free -mh  
total used free shared buff/cache available  
Mem: 31G 22G 746M 186M 8.2G 8.3G  
Swap: 0B 0B 0B

 ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/5/2/52de9ff066ec4351c9f9e7239eeb99254cb6d063.png)

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**Author:** ![philippkahr](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/philippkahr/32/100137_2.png) [@philippkahr](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/philippkahr)\
**Post date:** [November 15, 2019, 7:44am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-reduce-elasticsearch-memory-usage/207997/2 "2019-11-15T07:44:39Z")

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How many nodes do you have? How fast are your disks? how big are the disks attached? You can turn on x.pack.monitoring in kibana in the monitoring tab, than you would see the internals of elastic and see how much memory a specific index is taking.

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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:** [December 13, 2019, 7:44am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-reduce-elasticsearch-memory-usage/207997/3 "2019-12-13T07:44:42Z")

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