Index recovery prioritization

Unallocated shards are recovered in order of priority, whenever possible. Indices are sorted into priority order as follows:

  • the optional index.priority setting (higher before lower)
  • the index creation date (higher before lower)
  • the index name (higher before lower)

This means that, by default, newer indices will be recovered before older indices.

Use the per-index dynamically updatable index.priority setting to customise the index prioritization order. For instance:

  1. PUT index_1
  3. PUT index_2
  5. PUT index_3
  6. {
  7.   "settings": {
  8.     "index.priority": 10
  9.   }
  10. }
  12. PUT index_4
  13. {
  14.   "settings": {
  15.     "index.priority": 5
  16.   }
  17. }

In the above example:

  • index_3 will be recovered first because it has the highest index.priority.
  • index_4 will be recovered next because it has the next highest priority.
  • index_2 will be recovered next because it was created more recently.
  • index_1 will be recovered last.

This setting accepts an integer, and can be updated on a live index with the update index settings API:

  1. PUT index_4/_settings
  2. {
  3.   "index.priority": 1
  4. }