# Reasons for high heap memory usage for a small index and idle node? **URL:** \ **Category:** Elasticsearch\ **Created:** [September 17, 2015, 5:19pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/reasons-for-high-heap-memory-usage-for-a-small-index-and-idle-node/29499 "2015-09-17T17:19:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![austin\_lee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a8b319/32.png) [@austin\_lee](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/austin_lee)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2015, 5:19pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/reasons-for-high-heap-memory-usage-for-a-small-index-and-idle-node/29499/1 "2015-09-17T17:19:16Z")
I'm trying to understand why I'm having high resident heap usage for a small index on an idle node. Here are is some information on my current state. Elastic 1.4.4 4 node es cluster (all set to master true/data true) Node in question is not the master. Heap used/commited = 5.9/7.9 GB OS Memory = 16GB Index size for primary shard on node: 205MB Other shards on the node: Only about 10 MB Index information from HQ: Index documents: 2.1 million Max documents: 2.4 million Delete Documents: 287K Merge Total: 89 Merge Total Docs: 35 million Merge Total Size: 2.9GB The way I've built up my index was issue a lot indexes in a very short amount of time. I built it inefficient manner (doc per bulk request) with upsert enabled. I'm routing and using the same routing key for my inserts. The inserts have a mix of standard insert/updates and some partial updates /upserts on the same documents. I hit originally a OOM issue during this time but after recovering and restarting the node mem usage stays at around 70% of heap used. Originally all my nodes were around 2-30% heap used but now they are stuck in the higher area for what I'm considering a small index. I know I probably need to do a heapdump, but I'm trying to find some reasoning for the current state my node is in now. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2017, 11:49pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/reasons-for-high-heap-memory-usage-for-a-small-index-and-idle-node/29499/2 "2017-07-05T23:49:39Z")
Closed on July 5, 2017, 11:49pm UTC