# Merges.total\_size too large?

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/merges-total-size-too-large/84452>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [May 3, 2017, 7:37pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/merges-total-size-too-large/84452 "2017-05-03T19:37:03Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![npow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/e99b99/32.png) [@npow](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/npow)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 7:37pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/merges-total-size-too-large/84452/1 "2017-05-03T19:37:03Z")

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I'm looking at my shard stats for one of my indices, and it says that the merge size is way larger than the store size, which seems wrong. Am I supposed to be concerned about this? I have set the refresh\_interval to 30s.

```auto
  "store": {
    "size": "12.4gb",
    "size_in_bytes": 13359175068,
    "throttle_time": "0s",
    "throttle_time_in_millis": 0
  },
  "merges": {
    "current": 0,
    "current_docs": 0,
    "current_size": "0b",
    "current_size_in_bytes": 0,
    "total": 8945,
    "total_time": "3.6h",
    "total_time_in_millis": 13258698,
    "total_docs": 164817192,
    "total_size": "69.5gb",
    "total_size_in_bytes": 74718348119,
    "total_stopped_time": "0s",
    "total_stopped_time_in_millis": 0,
    "total_throttled_time": "2.1h",
    "total_throttled_time_in_millis": 7765809,
    "total_auto_throttle": "5mb",
    "total_auto_throttle_in_bytes": 5242880
  },
``
```

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![polyfractal](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/polyfractal/32/48162_2.png) [@polyfractal](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/polyfractal)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 8:05pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/merges-total-size-too-large/84452/2 "2017-05-03T20:05:46Z")

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I wouldn't be concerned, unless you are seeing bad performance. Merges happen when documents are added, deleted or updated. So if you're updating/deleting many docs, that will trigger merges to "clean up" the garbage over time. It's a background process and I wouldn't worry about it unless you explicitly have a performance problem you're trying to track down 🙂

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [May 31, 2017, 8:15pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/merges-total-size-too-large/84452/3 "2017-05-31T20:15:34Z")

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