# Need some help in understanding Why retrieving all snapshots is taking forever

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/need-some-help-in-understanding-why-retrieving-all-snapshots-is-taking-forever/361450>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [June 13, 2024, 9:44pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/need-some-help-in-understanding-why-retrieving-all-snapshots-is-taking-forever/361450 "2024-06-13T21:44:13Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![kushalOtter](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/kushalotter/32/122424_2.png) [@kushalOtter](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/kushalOtter)\
**Post date:** [June 13, 2024, 9:44pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/need-some-help-in-understanding-why-retrieving-all-snapshots-is-taking-forever/361450/1 "2024-06-13T21:44:13Z")

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Hi all,  
We are using the elasticsearch for storing the logs of our system via the filebeat and our cluster consists of the following on 6.8 Elasticsearch Cluster

```auto
  "cluster_name" : "elk",
  "status" : "green",
  "timed_out" : false,
  "number_of_nodes" : 24,
  "number_of_data_nodes" : 21,
  "active_primary_shards" : 4284,
  "active_shards" : 8568,
  "relocating_shards" : 0,
  "initializing_shards" : 0,
  "unassigned_shards" : 0,
  "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" : 100.0
}

```

I have setup the snapshot repository to S3. Have a python cronjob that takes the snapshot of indices older than 30 days to s3 and then deletes it on the cluster. Lately, when I go to get the list of snapshot via the command  
`curl http://localhost:9200/_cat/snapshots/repo_name?pretty`  
It takes forever to get the result (\>10m) and in most of the time, I just give up and my cron-job is failing because it timeouts while its calls to get the status of the snapshot. Any suggestions or help is well appreciated. Thanks

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![DavidTurner](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/davidturner/32/22453_2.png) [@DavidTurner](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/DavidTurner)\
**Post date:** [June 14, 2024, 7:18am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/need-some-help-in-understanding-why-retrieving-all-snapshots-is-taking-forever/361450/2 "2024-06-14T07:18:59Z")

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Elasticsearch will reply eventually, but with large snapshot repositories it may indeed take minutes (sometimes hours) to list them all. Especially on such an old version - 6.8 hasn't seen any enhancements for over 5 years now and went EOL ages ago. You need to upgrade as a matter of urgency.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![kushalOtter](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/kushalotter/32/122424_2.png) [@kushalOtter](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/kushalOtter)\
**Post date:** [June 14, 2024, 5:31pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/need-some-help-in-understanding-why-retrieving-all-snapshots-is-taking-forever/361450/3 "2024-06-14T17:31:18Z")

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Thanks a lot David, We have plans to update. I was wondering if there is anything I can do currently to mitigate the latency of retrieving the snapshots. Perhaps only way is to upgrade.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![DavidTurner](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/davidturner/32/22453_2.png) [@DavidTurner](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/DavidTurner)\
**Post date:** [June 14, 2024, 6:02pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/need-some-help-in-understanding-why-retrieving-all-snapshots-is-taking-forever/361450/4 "2024-06-14T18:02:31Z")

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I don't remember any workarounds but it's been so long since I've even looked at the 6.8 code, sorry.