# Segments memory increases after search
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/segments-memory-increases-after-search/33633
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [November 3, 2015, 1:22pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/segments-memory-increases-after-search/33633 "2015-11-03T13:22:47Z")
**Posts on this page:** 7
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Alex\_F](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Alex_F)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2015, 1:22pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/segments-memory-increases-after-search/33633/1 "2015-11-03T13:22:47Z")
Hello everyone!
Does anybody know why segments memory increases (column 'sm' in \_cat API) after searches.
For example, I have the next stat before searches:
`n hp hm fm fe fcm sm so sqc`
`Thunderstrike 58 86gb 0b 26575 1.7gb 29.9gb 0 0`
`Burstarr 57 86gb 492.4mb 20461 1.4gb 24.9gb 0 0`
`Microchip 2 16gb 0b 0 0b 0b 0 0`
And after ~30 wide searches:
`n hp hm fm fe fcm sm so sqc`
`Thunderstrike 72 86gb 5.1gb 139468 1.7gb 44.9gb 0 0`
`Burstarr 78 86gb 2.8gb 78926 1.4gb 37.4gb 0 0`
`Microchip 10 16gb 0b 0 0b 0b 0 0`
If I restart cluster, I'll get the first values of sm.
Is it Lucene area?
P.S. Yes, I have a LOT of data (~10TB of indices size).
---
### Author:  [@nik9000](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/nik9000)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2015, 1:41pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/segments-memory-increases-after-search/33633/2 "2015-11-03T13:41:35Z")
Its super hard to say but I have a few tips:
1. Wrap the output of `_cat` in triple backticks (```) so it gets a fixed width font.
2. Post an example query. Or one with names changed but the same structure.
---
### Author:  [@Alex\_F](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Alex_F)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2015, 2:18pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/segments-memory-increases-after-search/33633/3 "2015-11-03T14:18:31Z")
Thanks for your reply, Nik! I have the same template for all search queries:
```auto
"from" : 0,
"size" : 100,
"query" : {
"filtered" : {
"query" : {
"indices" : {
"indices" : ["2015-*"],
"query" : {
"bool" : {
"must" : [
{
"query_string" : {
"default_operator" : "AND",
"query" : "keyword"
}
}
]
}
},
"no_match_query" : "none"
}
},
"filter" : {
"and" : [
{
"numeric_range" : {
"73" : { "from" : 0, "to" : 2067935475, "include_lower" : true, "include_upper" : true }
}
}
]
}
}
},
"partial_fields" : {
"_source" : {
"exclude" : "12290"
}
}
}
```
Also, I'm using elasticsearch 1.3.9, but I saw the same behaviour with 1.7.3.
---
### Author:  [@Alex\_F](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Alex_F)
#### Post date: [December 15, 2015, 9:05am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/segments-memory-increases-after-search/33633/4 "2015-12-15T09:05:40Z")
I can add some additional information I investigated recently.
````auto
elasticsearch-1.7.3-1.noarch
[localhost-"192.168.238.168" index]# service elasticsearch restart
Stopping elasticsearch: [OK]
Starting elasticsearch: [OK]
[localhost-"192.168.238.168" index]# curl '127.0.0.1:9200/_cat/nodes?h=sm&v'
sm
34mb
[localhost-"192.168.238.168" index]# curl localhost:9200/_search?q=hello
{result}
[localhost-"192.168.238.168" index]# curl '127.0.0.1:9200/_cat/nodes?h=sm&v'
sm
44.8mb
[localhost-"192.168.238.168" index]# service elasticsearch restart
Stopping elasticsearch: [OK]
Starting elasticsearch: [OK]
[localhost-"192.168.238.168" index]# curl '127.0.0.1:9200/_cat/nodes?h=sm&v'
sm
34mb```
But!
```[localhost-"192.168.238.168" index]# service elasticsearch restart
Stopping elasticsearch: [OK]
Starting elasticsearch: [OK]
[localhost-"192.168.238.168" index]# curl '127.0.0.1:9200/_cat/nodes?h=sm&v'
sm
34mb
[localhost-"192.168.238.168" index]# curl localhost:9200/_search?q=h*
{result}
[localhost-"192.168.238.168" index]# curl '127.0.0.1:9200/_cat/nodes?h=sm&v'
sm
34mb```
So sm increases after full term search.
I investigated lucene code a bit and found that sm consists of FieldsProducer, DocValuesProducer, StoredFieldsReader and TermVectorsReader. Who is the culprit? TermsVector?
Is it important? Very important (at least for me), because I have the next typical situation:
1) After ES starting everything is OK, GC works rarely and frees a lot of memory;
```[2015-12-13 14:00:09,446][INFO][monitor.jvm] [Sluk] [gc][young][37410][451] duration [863ms], collections [1]/[1s], total [863ms]/[1.1m], memory [76.8gb]->[53.5gb]/
[86gb], all_pools {[young] [26.2gb]->[32mb]/[0b]}{[survivor] [352mb]->[3.2gb]/[0b]}{[old] [50.2gb]->[50.2gb]/[86gb]}```
2) I make 100 searches or more
3) GC works every minute and frees nothing
```[2015-12-15 14:02:20,000][WARN][monitor.jvm] [War V] [gc][old][15560][682] duration [25.9s], collections [1]/[30.2s], total [25.9s]/[5.1h], memory [80.2gb]->[77.8gb
]/[86gb], all_pools {[young] [2gb]->[128mb]/[0b]}{[survivor] [192mb]->[0b]/[0b]}{[old] [78gb]->[77.7gb]/[86gb]}```
4) ES becomes unresponsive
But index size the same!
````
---
### Author:  [@Alex\_F](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Alex_F)
#### Post date: [December 17, 2015, 9:03am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/segments-memory-increases-after-search/33633/5 "2015-12-17T09:03:28Z")
So it were norms and I chose a hard way to realize that 🙂 Disabling norms helped me.
---
### Author:  [@nik9000](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/nik9000)
#### Post date: [December 17, 2015, 2:13pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/segments-memory-increases-after-search/33633/6 "2015-12-17T14:13:51Z")
> [@Alex\_F](#):
>
> So it were norms and I chose a hard way to realize that 😄 Disabling norms helped me.
Sorry! Yeah, norms are a thing. They live in memory in some versions but there was an effort to get them to disk like doc values and that's done but I don't remember which version it is in. 2.0 probably.
---
### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [July 5, 2017, 11:30pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/segments-memory-increases-after-search/33633/7 "2017-07-05T23:30:11Z")