# Reason for brief cluster status RED

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/reason-for-brief-cluster-status-red/311719>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [August 9, 2022, 11:51am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/reason-for-brief-cluster-status-red/311719 "2022-08-09T11:51:24Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![nisow95612](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/3d9bf3/32.png) [@nisow95612](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/nisow95612)\
**Post date:** [August 9, 2022, 11:51am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/reason-for-brief-cluster-status-red/311719/1 "2022-08-09T11:51:24Z")

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From time to time I see [Cluster health API | Elasticsearch Guide [8.3] | Elastic](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/cluster-health.html) return `"status": "red"` for a few seconds. This never lasts long, so simply running [Cluster allocation explain API | Elasticsearch Guide [8.3] | Elastic](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/cluster-allocation-explain.html) is not an option.

When this happens, `number_of_nodes` does not report any missing nodes and `initializing_shards` and `unassigned_shards` are at most 3. Since all my indices have 3 shards, it looks like one of them went temporarily bad.

So the question is: How do I find out which index was responsible for `"status": "red"`?

* * *

It must be something easy, but I just don't see it.

I see that when this happens, there is often `"number_of_pending_tasks": 1`, so i tried with [cat task management API | Elasticsearch Guide [8.3] | Elastic](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/cat-tasks.html) , but that seems to return only currently executing tasks, so the "guilty" task is not there anymore.

I expected to find the answer via [cat recovery API | Elasticsearch Guide [8.3] | Elastic](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/cat-recovery.html) somehow, but so far I don't understand how to sort this by time of completion.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![nisow95612](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/3d9bf3/32.png) [@nisow95612](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/nisow95612)\
**Post date:** [September 5, 2022, 7:32am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/reason-for-brief-cluster-status-red/311719/2 "2022-09-05T07:32:43Z")

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Anyone?  
I am sure it must be something really simple like asking for last shard to become unallocated.

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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:** [October 3, 2022, 7:32am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/reason-for-brief-cluster-status-red/311719/3 "2022-10-03T07:32:49Z")

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