# Red status because of 1 index has an unassigned shard

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/red-status-because-of-1-index-has-an-unassigned-shard/31551>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [October 2, 2015, 3:27pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/red-status-because-of-1-index-has-an-unassigned-shard/31551 "2015-10-02T15:27:24Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 9\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![michaellizhou](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/michaellizhou/32/4143_2.png) [@michaellizhou](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/michaellizhou)\
**Post date:** [October 2, 2015, 3:27pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/red-status-because-of-1-index-has-an-unassigned-shard/31551/1 "2015-10-02T15:27:24Z")

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I left elastic running and came back to find that my status is red. I have 9 indices and only 1 of them is giving me a red status the rest are fine:

```
logstash-2015.10.01-systemstats":{
	"status":"red",
	"number_of_shards":5,
	"number_of_replicas":0,
	"active_primary_shards":3,
	"active_shards":3,
	"relocating_shards":0,
	"initializing_shards":1,
	"unassigned_shards":1
	}

```

So why would only one of my indices be red but the rest are green. This is some strange behavior. And since its red what should I do?

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**Author:** ![dadoonet](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/dadoonet/32/137187_2.png) [@dadoonet](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dadoonet)\
**Post date:** [October 2, 2015, 3:50pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/red-status-because-of-1-index-has-an-unassigned-shard/31551/2 "2015-10-02T15:50:44Z")

</div>

2 choices:

- you have somewhere on a disk this shard so you should make it available in your cluster
- you don't have a sane version of this shard

If the later, you can either live with this red index. It's still working but partially.  
Or you can delete the index.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![michaellizhou](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/michaellizhou/32/4143_2.png) [@michaellizhou](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/michaellizhou)\
**Post date:** [October 2, 2015, 4:30pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/red-status-because-of-1-index-has-an-unassigned-shard/31551/3 "2015-10-02T16:30:40Z")

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I don't think i understand your options, but i definitely do not want to delete the index. When I push this to production the documents are quite important.

I just don't understand why this index is having problems. My prior indices are green and the index after is green also. meaning everything before the 1st is okay and everything after the first is also.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![dadoonet](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/dadoonet/32/137187_2.png) [@dadoonet](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dadoonet)\
**Post date:** [October 2, 2015, 4:45pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/red-status-because-of-1-index-has-an-unassigned-shard/31551/4 "2015-10-02T16:45:24Z")

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It's barely impossible to know why your index is Red without any detailled information such as: logs, settings, mappings, hardware...

May be you over allocated the number of shards per node?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![michaellizhou](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/michaellizhou/32/4143_2.png) [@michaellizhou](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/michaellizhou)\
**Post date:** [October 2, 2015, 4:49pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/red-status-because-of-1-index-has-an-unassigned-shard/31551/5 "2015-10-02T16:49:18Z")

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Is that possible to over allocate per node? Where I can I read documentation on this?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![dadoonet](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/dadoonet/32/137187_2.png) [@dadoonet](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dadoonet)\
**Post date:** [October 2, 2015, 5:08pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/red-status-because-of-1-index-has-an-unassigned-shard/31551/6 "2015-10-02T17:08:49Z")

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How many shards do you have?  
How many nodes?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![michaellizhou](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/michaellizhou/32/4143_2.png) [@michaellizhou](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/michaellizhou)\
**Post date:** [October 2, 2015, 5:34pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/red-status-because-of-1-index-has-an-unassigned-shard/31551/7 "2015-10-02T17:34:25Z")

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There are about 10 indices with 5 shards each. And with only 1 node.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![dadoonet](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/dadoonet/32/137187_2.png) [@dadoonet](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dadoonet)\
**Post date:** [October 2, 2015, 6:02pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/red-status-because-of-1-index-has-an-unassigned-shard/31551/8 "2015-10-02T18:02:40Z")

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That sounds reasonable at a first glance.

That said you should reduce the number of shards unless you really need them.

If you have no replica, I don't really see how to recover from that but again logs might tell more.

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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:** [July 5, 2017, 11:47pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/red-status-because-of-1-index-has-an-unassigned-shard/31551/9 "2017-07-05T23:47:00Z")

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Closed on July 5, 2017, 11:47pm UTC