elasticsearch/docs/reference/how-to/search-speed.asciidoc

[[tune-for-search-speed]]
== Tune for search speed

[float]
=== Give memory to the filesystem cache

Elasticsearch heavily relies on the filesystem cache in order to make search
fast. In general, you should make sure that at least half the available memory
goes to the filesystem cache so that Elasticsearch can keep hot regions of the
index in physical memory.

[float]
=== Use faster hardware

If your search is I/O bound, you should investigate giving more memory to the
filesystem cache (see above) or buying faster drives. In particular SSD drives
are known to perform better than spinning disks. Always use local storage,
remote filesystems such as `NFS` or `SMB` should be avoided. Also beware of
virtualized storage such as Amazon's `Elastic Block Storage`. Virtualized
storage works very well with Elasticsearch, and it is appealing since it is so
fast and simple to set up, but it is also unfortunately inherently slower on an
ongoing basis when compared to dedicated local storage. If you put an index on
`EBS`, be sure to use provisioned IOPS otherwise operations could be quickly
throttled.

If your search is CPU-bound, you should investigate buying faster CPUs.

[float]
=== Document modeling

Documents should be modeled so that search-time operations are as cheap as possible.

In particular, joins should be avoided. <<nested,`nested`>> can make queries
several times slower and <<mapping-parent-field,parent-child>> relations can make
queries hundreds of times slower. So if the same questions can be answered without
joins by denormalizing documents, significant speedups can be expected.

[float]
=== Search as few fields as possible

The more fields a <<query-dsl-query-string-query,`query_string`>> or
<<query-dsl-multi-match-query,`multi_match`>> query targets, the slower it is.
A common technique to improve search speed over multiple fields is to copy
their values into a single field at index time, and then use this field at
search time. This can be automated with the <<copy-to,`copy-to`>> directive of
mappings without having to change the source of documents. Here is an example
of an index containing movies that optimizes queries that search over both the
name and the plot of the movie by indexing both values into the `name_and_plot`
field.

[source,console]
--------------------------------------------------
PUT movies
{
  "mappings": {
    "properties": {
      "name_and_plot": {
        "type": "text"
      },
      "name": {
        "type": "text",
        "copy_to": "name_and_plot"
      },
      "plot": {
        "type": "text",
        "copy_to": "name_and_plot"
      }
    }
  }
}
--------------------------------------------------

[float]
=== Pre-index data

You should leverage patterns in your queries to optimize the way data is indexed.
For instance, if all your documents have a `price` field and most queries run
<<search-aggregations-bucket-range-aggregation,`range`>> aggregations on a fixed
list of ranges, you could make this aggregation faster by pre-indexing the ranges
into the index and using a <<search-aggregations-bucket-terms-aggregation,`terms`>>
aggregations.

For instance, if documents look like:

[source,console]
--------------------------------------------------
PUT index/_doc/1
{
  "designation": "spoon",
  "price": 13
}
--------------------------------------------------

and search requests look like:

[source,console]
--------------------------------------------------
GET index/_search
{
  "aggs": {
    "price_ranges": {
      "range": {
        "field": "price",
        "ranges": [
          { "to": 10 },
          { "from": 10, "to": 100 },
          { "from": 100 }
        ]
      }
    }
  }
}
--------------------------------------------------
// TEST[continued]

Then documents could be enriched by a `price_range` field at index time, which
should be mapped as a <<keyword,`keyword`>>:

[source,console]
--------------------------------------------------
PUT index
{
  "mappings": {
    "properties": {
      "price_range": {
        "type": "keyword"
      }
    }
  }
}

PUT index/_doc/1
{
  "designation": "spoon",
  "price": 13,
  "price_range": "10-100"
}
--------------------------------------------------

And then search requests could aggregate this new field rather than running a
`range` aggregation on the `price` field.

[source,console]
--------------------------------------------------
GET index/_search
{
  "aggs": {
    "price_ranges": {
      "terms": {
        "field": "price_range"
      }
    }
  }
}
--------------------------------------------------
// TEST[continued]

[float]
[[map-ids-as-keyword]]
=== Consider mapping identifiers as `keyword`

The fact that some data is numeric does not mean it should always be mapped as a
<<number,numeric field>>. The way that Elasticsearch indexes numbers optimizes
for `range` queries while `keyword` fields are better at `term` queries. Typically, 
fields storing identifiers such as an `ISBN` or any number identifying a record 
from another database are rarely used in `range` queries or aggregations. This is
why they might benefit from being mapped as <<keyword,`keyword`>> rather than as 
`integer` or `long`.

[float]
=== Avoid scripts

In general, scripts should be avoided. If they are absolutely needed, you
should prefer the `painless` and `expressions` engines.

[float]
=== Search rounded dates

Queries on date fields that use `now` are typically not cacheable since the
range that is being matched changes all the time. However switching to a
rounded date is often acceptable in terms of user experience, and has the
benefit of making better use of the query cache.

For instance the below query:

[source,console]
--------------------------------------------------
PUT index/_doc/1
{
  "my_date": "2016-05-11T16:30:55.328Z"
}

GET index/_search
{
  "query": {
    "constant_score": {
      "filter": {
        "range": {
          "my_date": {
            "gte": "now-1h",
            "lte": "now"
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}
--------------------------------------------------

could be replaced with the following query:

[source,console]
--------------------------------------------------
GET index/_search
{
  "query": {
    "constant_score": {
      "filter": {
        "range": {
          "my_date": {
            "gte": "now-1h/m",
            "lte": "now/m"
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}
--------------------------------------------------
// TEST[continued]

In that case we rounded to the minute, so if the current time is `16:31:29`,
the range query will match everything whose value of the `my_date` field is
between `15:31:00` and `16:31:59`. And if several users run a query that
contains this range in the same minute, the query cache could help speed things
up a bit. The longer the interval that is used for rounding, the more the query
cache can help, but beware that too aggressive rounding might also hurt user
experience.


NOTE: It might be tempting to split ranges into a large cacheable part and
smaller not cacheable parts in order to be able to leverage the query cache,
as shown below:

[source,console]
--------------------------------------------------
GET index/_search
{
  "query": {
    "constant_score": {
      "filter": {
        "bool": {
          "should": [
            {
              "range": {
                "my_date": {
                  "gte": "now-1h",
                  "lte": "now-1h/m"
                }
              }
            },
            {
              "range": {
                "my_date": {
                  "gt": "now-1h/m",
                  "lt": "now/m"
                }
              }
            },
            {
              "range": {
                "my_date": {
                  "gte": "now/m",
                  "lte": "now"
                }
              }
            }
          ]
        }
      }
    }
  }
}
--------------------------------------------------
// TEST[continued]

However such practice might make the query run slower in some cases since the
overhead introduced by the `bool` query may defeat the savings from better
leveraging the query cache.

[float]
=== Force-merge read-only indices

Indices that are read-only may benefit from being <<indices-forcemerge,merged
down to a single segment>>. This is typically the case with time-based indices:
only the index for the current time frame is getting new documents while older
indices are read-only. Shards that have been force-merged into a single segment
can use simpler and more efficient data structures to perform searches.

IMPORTANT: Do not force-merge indices to which you are still writing, or to
which you will write again in the future. Instead, rely on the automatic
background merge process to perform merges as needed to keep the index running
smoothly. If you continue to write to a force-merged index then its performance
may become much worse.

[float]
=== Warm up global ordinals

Global ordinals are a data-structure that is used in order to run
<<search-aggregations-bucket-terms-aggregation,`terms`>> aggregations on
<<keyword,`keyword`>> fields. They are loaded lazily in memory because
Elasticsearch does not know which fields will be used in `terms` aggregations
and which fields won't. You can tell Elasticsearch to load global ordinals
eagerly when starting or refreshing a shard by configuring mappings as
described below:

[source,console]
--------------------------------------------------
PUT index
{
  "mappings": {
    "properties": {
      "foo": {
        "type": "keyword",
        "eager_global_ordinals": true
      }
    }
  }
}
--------------------------------------------------

[float]
=== Warm up the filesystem cache

If the machine running Elasticsearch is restarted, the filesystem cache will be
empty, so it will take some time before the operating system loads hot regions
of the index into memory so that search operations are fast. You can explicitly
tell the operating system which files should be loaded into memory eagerly
depending on the file extension using the <<file-system,`index.store.preload`>>
setting.

WARNING: Loading data into the filesystem cache eagerly on too many indices or
too many files will make search _slower_ if the filesystem cache is not large
enough to hold all the data. Use with caution.

[float]
=== Use index sorting to speed up conjunctions

<<index-modules-index-sorting,Index sorting>> can be useful in order to make
conjunctions faster at the cost of slightly slower indexing. Read more about it
in the <<index-modules-index-sorting-conjunctions,index sorting documentation>>.

[float]
[[preference-cache-optimization]]
=== Use `preference` to optimize cache utilization

There are multiple caches that can help with search performance, such as the
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Page_cache[filesystem cache], the
<<shard-request-cache,request cache>> or the <<query-cache,query cache>>. Yet
all these caches are maintained at the node level, meaning that if you run the
same request twice in a row, have 1 <<glossary-replica-shard,replica>> or more
and use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round-robin_DNS[round-robin], the default
routing algorithm, then those two requests will go to different shard copies,
preventing node-level caches from helping.

Since it is common for users of a search application to run similar requests
one after another, for instance in order to analyze a narrower subset of the
index, using a preference value that identifies the current user or session
could help optimize usage of the caches.

[float]
=== Replicas might help with throughput, but not always

In addition to improving resiliency, replicas can help improve throughput. For
instance if you have a single-shard index and three nodes, you will need to
set the number of replicas to 2 in order to have 3 copies of your shard in
total so that all nodes are utilized.

Now imagine that you have a 2-shards index and two nodes. In one case, the
number of replicas is 0, meaning that each node holds a single shard. In the
second case the number of replicas is 1, meaning that each node has two shards.
Which setup is going to perform best in terms of search performance? Usually,
the setup that has fewer shards per node in total will perform better. The
reason for that is that it gives a greater share of the available filesystem
cache to each shard, and the filesystem cache is probably Elasticsearch's
number 1 performance factor. At the same time, beware that a setup that does
not have replicas is subject to failure in case of a single node failure, so
there is a trade-off between throughput and availability.

So what is the right number of replicas? If you have a cluster that has
`num_nodes` nodes, `num_primaries` primary shards _in total_ and if you want to
be able to cope with `max_failures` node failures at once at most, then the
right number of replicas for you is
`max(max_failures, ceil(num_nodes / num_primaries) - 1)`.

=== Tune your queries with the Profile API

You can also analyse how expensive each component of your queries and 
aggregations are using the {ref}/search-profile.html[Profile API]. This might 
allow you to tune your queries to be less expensive, resulting in a positive 
performance result and reduced load. Also note that Profile API payloads can be 
easily visualised for better readability in the 
{kibana-ref}/xpack-profiler.html[Search Profiler], which is a Kibana dev tools 
UI available in all X-Pack licenses, including the free X-Pack Basic license.

Some caveats to the Profile API are that:

 - the Profile API as a debugging tool adds significant overhead to search execution and can also have a very verbose output
 - given the added overhead, the resulting took times are not reliable indicators of actual took time, but can be used comparatively between clauses for relative timing differences
 - the Profile API is best for exploring possible reasons behind the most costly clauses of a query but isn't intended for accurately measuring absolute timings of each clause 

[[faster-phrase-queries]]
=== Faster phrase queries with `index_phrases`

The <<text,`text`>> field has an <<index-phrases,`index_phrases`>> option that
indexes 2-shingles and is automatically leveraged by query parsers to run phrase
queries that don't have a slop. If your use-case involves running lots of phrase
queries, this can speed up queries significantly.

[[faster-prefix-queries]]
=== Faster prefix queries with `index_prefixes`

The <<text,`text`>> field has an <<index-phrases,`index_prefixes`>> option that
indexes prefixes of all terms and is automatically leveraged by query parsers to
run prefix queries. If your use-case involves running lots of prefix queries,
this can speed up queries significantly.