
Elasticsearch Cat Indices provides a quick overview of your cluster's indices, including their health, size, and number of documents.
The health of your indices is a critical metric, and Elasticsearch Cat Indices makes it easy to check. With a single command, you can see which indices are green, yellow, or red.
Elasticsearch Cat Indices also provides information on the size of your indices, including the disk usage and the number of documents stored. This information is essential for understanding how much storage space your indices are consuming.
Understanding the number of documents in your indices helps you identify which ones are most active and require more frequent indexing.
Consider reading: Elasticsearch Indices
Query Parameters and Response Size Limit
To control the response size of Elasticsearch's _cat/indices API, you can use the `pri` query parameter to limit the response to only include information from primary shards. This can be especially useful when working with large indices.
You can also use the `time` query parameter to specify the unit used to display time values, such as `ms` or `s`. This can help you tailor the response to your specific needs.
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The `cat.indices.response.limit.number_of_indices` setting can be configured to limit the number of indices returned in the response. This can help prevent overwhelming the system with too much data.
Here's a summary of the query parameters that can be used to control the response size:
Query Parameters
Query Parameters are used to customize the response size limit. The unit used to display byte values is either b, kb, mb, gb, tb, or pb.
You can limit the returned indices based on their health status. Supported values include green, GREEN, yellow, YELLOW, red, RED, unknown, or unavailable.
The response can include information from segments that are not loaded into memory if you set include_unloaded_segments to true.
If you want the response to only include information from primary shards, set pri to true.
Here are some common query parameters used to limit the response size:
- bytes: b, kb, mb, gb, tb, or pb
- health: green, GREEN, yellow, YELLOW, red, RED, unknown, or unavailable
- pri: true or false
- include_unloaded_segments: true or false
You can also sort the response by specific columns. The list of columns that determine how the table should be sorted is called s. Sorting defaults to ascending and can be changed by setting :asc or :desc as a suffix to the column name.
Response Size Limit

Limiting the response size can be a challenge, especially when dealing with large amounts of data.
You can configure the cat.indices.response.limit.number_of_indices setting to limit the number of indexes returned. For more information, see Cluster-level CAT response limit settings.
By setting this limit, you can prevent overwhelming your system with too much data at once. This can help improve performance and make it easier to work with your data.
Understanding Indices
The status of an index in Elasticsearch can be either "open" or "closed".
In an open index, you can add, update, or delete documents, whereas in a closed index, you can only read the existing documents.
An open index is indicated by a "status" of "open" in the output of the cat indices API.
Here are some key columns to look for in the output of the cat indices API:
- `health`: The health status of the index, which can be “green”, “yellow”, or “red”.
- `docs.count`: The number of documents in the index.
- `store.size`: The total size of the index on disk.
Indices
Indices are an essential part of Elasticsearch, and understanding how they work is crucial for managing your data efficiently.

Indices can take up a significant amount of disk space, but you can limit the information to a specific index by adding the index name after your query.
The health status of an index is a crucial metric, and it can be one of three colors: green, yellow, or red. A green status means all primary and replica shards are active, while a yellow status means all primary shards are active, but some replica shards are not.
Here's a breakdown of the most important columns in the cat indices API output:
By understanding the health status and disk usage of your indices, you can make informed decisions about your data and optimize your Elasticsearch cluster for better performance.
Allocation
The allocation of disk space for indices is a crucial aspect of managing your database's performance. Lists the allocation of disk space for indices and the number of shards on each node.
In some cases, you may need to adjust the allocation to optimize your database's performance. Default request: Allocation lists the allocation of disk space for indices and the number of shards on each node.
For another approach, see: Elasticsearch Node Roles
Field Data
Field data is a crucial aspect of understanding indices. It lists the memory size used by each field per node.
To get a clear picture, you can add the field name after your query, which will limit the information to that specific field.
Field data can be overwhelming, but by focusing on one field at a time, you can make sense of it.
Templates
Templates list the names, patterns, order numbers, and version numbers of index templates. This is a crucial aspect of index management.
To limit the information to a specific thread pool, you can add the thread pool name after your query. This helps you manage your templates more efficiently.
The templates section provides a list of available templates, including aliases, allocation, count, field data, health, indices, master, node attributes, nodes, pending tasks, plugins, recovery, repositories, segments, shards, snapshots, tasks, and thread pool.
Here are the key items listed under templates:
- Aliases
- Allocation
- Count
- Field data
- Health
- Indices
- Master
- Node attributes
- Nodes
- Pending tasks
- Plugins
- Recovery
- Repositories
- Segments
- Shards
- Snapshots
- Tasks
- Templates
- Thread pool
Working with Indices

You can use the cat indices API to get a list of all indices in your Elasticsearch cluster, along with some basic information about each one.
The basic syntax of the request is straightforward: you send an HTTP request to your Elasticsearch cluster. This command will return a list of all indices in your cluster, along with some basic information about each one, such as its health status, number of documents, and total size.
You can customize the output by adding parameters to the request. For example, you can use the `h` parameter to specify which columns to display. This command will only display the index name, health status, index status, document count, and store size.
The `status` column in the output indicates the status of the index. It can be either "open" or "closed".
Take a look at this: Elasticsearch Health
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