# Problem of ElasticSearch on ZFS

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/problem-of-elasticsearch-on-zfs/15061>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [December 31, 2013, 6:59am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/problem-of-elasticsearch-on-zfs/15061 "2013-12-31T06:59:20Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![xianghui](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/xianghui/32/1905_2.png) [@xianghui](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/xianghui)\
**Post date:** [December 31, 2013, 6:59am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/problem-of-elasticsearch-on-zfs/15061/1 "2013-12-31T06:59:20Z")

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Dear All

Could I check whether anyone deploy ElasticSearch on ZFS?

We are facing some problems with our ES instance on ZFS. When indexing (and  
idle mode) there seems to be high volume of reads on the drives using ZFS,  
thus resulting in high iowait, low CPU utilization. However, there is very  
little writes on the drives.

We also experimented putting the data directory in a non-ZFS based drive.  
The performance seems much better, good CPU utilization, much higher  
volumes of writes compared to reads.

Anyone have any hints of what could be wrong.

Thanks!

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**Author:** ![jprante](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/jprante/32/44941_2.png) [@jprante](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/jprante)\
**Post date:** [December 31, 2013, 4:43pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/problem-of-elasticsearch-on-zfs/15061/2 "2013-12-31T16:43:35Z")

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Do you run ZFS in sync mode? Are you on Solaris?

Jörg

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**Author:** ![xianghui](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/xianghui/32/1905_2.png) [@xianghui](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/xianghui)\
**Post date:** [January 1, 2014, 6:01am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/problem-of-elasticsearch-on-zfs/15061/3 "2014-01-01T06:01:36Z")

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Hi

we are running on Linux (ubuntu).

The ZFS is set to standard (default).

On Wednesday, January 1, 2014 12:43:35 AM UTC+8, Jörg Prante wrote:

> Do you run ZFS in sync mode? Are you on Solaris?
> 
> Jörg

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**Author:** ![jprante](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/jprante/32/44941_2.png) [@jprante](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/jprante)\
**Post date:** [January 1, 2014, 12:10pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/problem-of-elasticsearch-on-zfs/15061/4 "2014-01-01T12:10:05Z")

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Which Ubuntu version? What ZFS product/version?

What hardware controller do you use for ZFS disks?

You have to carefully prepare ZFS for apps like ES, to avoid RAM  
overallocation, block misalignments, and double caching.

For example:

- only assign a fragment of RAM to ZFS adaptive replacement cache  
(zfs\_arc\_max) - ES is doing all the caching

- use the noop scheduler (ZFS reorders IO requests)

- use a read ahead block size of ZFS block size (drive ops must match ZFS  
block size)

- turn on write through of the disks (turn of write cache)

Jörg

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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 6, 2017, 1:58am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/problem-of-elasticsearch-on-zfs/15061/5 "2017-07-06T01:58:51Z")

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