Runbook

Elasticsearch virtual memory limit issue

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Overview

This incident type occurs when the Elasticsearch service is unable to function properly due to low virtual memory limit. Elasticsearch requires a minimum virtual memory limit to be set in the system, failing which it encounters issues such as "max virtual memory areas vm.max_map_count [65530] is too low, increase to at least". This error message indicates that the virtual memory limit set in the system is below the required minimum limit. This incident can cause system downtime and impact the performance of applications that rely on Elasticsearch.

Parameters

Debug

Check the current virtual memory limit

Increase the virtual memory limit temporarily

Increase the virtual memory limit permanently

Check the current memory usage of Elasticsearch

The system's virtual memory limit was not set to the minimum required value for Elasticsearch to function properly.

Repair

Increase the virtual memory limit to the minimum required value. This can be done by updating the "vm.max_map_count" kernel parameter value to a higher value. This can be achieved on Linux systems by running the command "sysctl -w vm.max_map_count=<new_value>" as the root user.

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