If the request contains wait_for_completion=false, Elasticsearch performs some preflight checks, launches the request, and returns a task you can use to cancel or get the status of the task. Elasticsearch creates a record of this task as a document at _tasks/<task_id>.

If you have many sources to reindex it is generally better to reindex them one at a time rather than using a glob pattern to pick up multiple sources. That way you can resume the process if there are any errors by removing the partially completed source and starting over. It also makes parallelizing the process fairly simple: split the list of sources to reindex and run each list in parallel.

One-off bash scripts seem to work nicely for this:

for index in i1 i2 i3 i4 i5; do
  curl -HContent-Type:application/json -XPOST localhost:9200/_reindex?pretty -d'{
    "source": {
      "index": "'$index'"
    },
    "dest": {
      "index": "'$index'-reindexed"
    }
  }'
done

Set requests_per_second to any positive decimal number (1.4, 6, 1000, etc.) to throttle the rate at which _reindex issues batches of index operations. Requests are throttled by padding each batch with a wait time. To disable throttling, set requests_per_second to -1.

The throttling is done by waiting between batches so that the scroll that _reindex uses internally can be given a timeout that takes into account the padding. The padding time is the difference between the batch size divided by the requests_per_second and the time spent writing. By default the batch size is 1000, so if requests_per_second is set to 500:

target_time = 1000 / 500 per second = 2 seconds
wait_time = target_time - write_time = 2 seconds - .5 seconds = 1.5 seconds

Since the batch is issued as a single _bulk request, large batch sizes cause Elasticsearch to create many requests and then wait for a while before starting the next set. This is "bursty" instead of "smooth".

The value of requests_per_second can be changed on a running reindex using the _rethrottle API:

POST _reindex/r1A2WoRbTwKZ516z6NEs5A:36619/_rethrottle?requests_per_second=-1

The task ID can be found using the tasks API.

Just like when setting it on the Reindex API, requests_per_second can be either -1 to disable throttling or any decimal number like 1.7 or 12 to throttle to that level. Rethrottling that speeds up the query takes effect immediately, but rethrottling that slows down the query will take effect after completing the current batch. This prevents scroll timeouts.

Reindex supports Sliced scroll to parallelize the reindexing process. This parallelization can improve efficiency and provide a convenient way to break the request down into smaller parts.

POST _reindex
{
  "source": {
    "index": "my-index-000001",
    "slice": {
      "id": 0,
      "max": 2
    }
  },
  "dest": {
    "index": "my-new-index-000001"
  }
}
POST _reindex
{
  "source": {
    "index": "my-index-000001",
    "slice": {
      "id": 1,
      "max": 2
    }
  },
  "dest": {
    "index": "my-new-index-000001"
  }
}

GET _refresh
POST my-new-index-000001/_search?size=0&filter_path=hits.total

{
  "hits": {
    "total" : {
        "value": 120,
        "relation": "eq"
    }
  }
}

POST _reindex?slices=5&refresh
{
  "source": {
    "index": "my-index-000001"
  },
  "dest": {
    "index": "my-new-index-000001"
  }
}

POST my-new-index-000001/_search?size=0&filter_path=hits.total

{
  "hits": {
    "total" : {
        "value": 120,
        "relation": "eq"
    }
  }
}

By default if _reindex sees a document with routing then the routing is preserved unless it’s changed by the script. You can set routing on the dest request to change this:

For example, you can use the following request to copy all documents from the source with the company name cat into the dest with routing set to cat.

POST _reindex
{
  "source": {
    "index": "source",
    "query": {
      "match": {
        "company": "cat"
      }
    }
  },
  "dest": {
    "index": "dest",
    "routing": "=cat"
  }
}

By default _reindex uses scroll batches of 1000. You can change the batch size with the size field in the source element:

POST _reindex
{
  "source": {
    "index": "source",
    "size": 100
  },
  "dest": {
    "index": "dest",
    "routing": "=cat"
  }
}

Reindex can also use the Ingest pipelines feature by specifying a pipeline like this:

POST _reindex
{
  "source": {
    "index": "source"
  },
  "dest": {
    "index": "dest",
    "pipeline": "some_ingest_pipeline"
  }
}

You can limit the documents by adding a query to the source. For example, the following request only copies documents with a user.id of kimchy into my-new-index-000001:

POST _reindex
{
  "source": {
    "index": "my-index-000001",
    "query": {
      "term": {
        "user.id": "kimchy"
      }
    }
  },
  "dest": {
    "index": "my-new-index-000001"
  }
}

You can limit the number of processed documents by setting max_docs. For example, this request copies a single document from my-index-000001 to my-new-index-000001:

POST _reindex
{
  "max_docs": 1,
  "source": {
    "index": "my-index-000001"
  },
  "dest": {
    "index": "my-new-index-000001"
  }
}

The index attribute in source can be a list, allowing you to copy from lots of sources in one request. This will copy documents from the my-index-000001 and my-index-000002 indices:

POST _reindex
{
  "source": {
    "index": ["my-index-000001", "my-index-000002"]
  },
  "dest": {
    "index": "my-new-index-000002"
  }
}

You can use source filtering to reindex a subset of the fields in the original documents. For example, the following request only reindexes the user.id and _doc fields of each document:

POST _reindex
{
  "source": {
    "index": "my-index-000001",
    "_source": ["user.id", "_doc"]
  },
  "dest": {
    "index": "my-new-index-000001"
  }
}

_reindex can be used to build a copy of an index with renamed fields. Say you create an index containing documents that look like this:

POST my-index-000001/_doc/1?refresh
{
  "text": "words words",
  "flag": "foo"
}

but you don’t like the name flag and want to replace it with tag. _reindex can create the other index for you:

POST _reindex
{
  "source": {
    "index": "my-index-000001"
  },
  "dest": {
    "index": "my-new-index-000001"
  },
  "script": {
    "source": "ctx._source.tag = ctx._source.remove(\"flag\")"
  }
}

Now you can get the new document:

GET my-new-index-000001/_doc/1

which will return:

{
  "found": true,
  "_id": "1",
  "_index": "my-new-index-000001",
  "_version": 1,
  "_seq_no": 44,
  "_primary_term": 1,
  "_source": {
    "text": "words words",
    "tag": "foo"
  }
}

You can use _reindex in combination with Painless to reindex daily indices to apply a new template to the existing documents.

Assuming you have indices that contain documents like:

PUT metricbeat-2016.05.30/_doc/1?refresh
{"system.cpu.idle.pct": 0.908}
PUT metricbeat-2016.05.31/_doc/1?refresh
{"system.cpu.idle.pct": 0.105}

The new template for the metricbeat-* indices is already loaded into Elasticsearch, but it applies only to the newly created indices. Painless can be used to reindex the existing documents and apply the new template.

The script below extracts the date from the index name and creates a new index with -1 appended. All data from metricbeat-2016.05.31 will be reindexed into metricbeat-2016.05.31-1.

POST _reindex
{
  "source": {
    "index": "metricbeat-*"
  },
  "dest": {
    "index": "metricbeat"
  },
  "script": {
    "lang": "painless",
    "source": "ctx._index = 'metricbeat-' + (ctx._index.substring('metricbeat-'.length(), ctx._index.length())) + '-1'"
  }
}

All documents from the previous metricbeat indices can now be found in the *-1 indices.

GET metricbeat-2016.05.30-1/_doc/1
GET metricbeat-2016.05.31-1/_doc/1

The previous method can also be used in conjunction with changing a field name to load only the existing data into the new index and rename any fields if needed.

_reindex can be used to extract a random subset of the source for testing:

POST _reindex
{
  "max_docs": 10,
  "source": {
    "index": "my-index-000001",
    "query": {
      "function_score" : {
        "random_score" : {},
        "min_score" : 0.9    
      }
    }
  },
  "dest": {
    "index": "my-new-index-000001"
  }
}

Like _update_by_query, _reindex supports a script that modifies the document. Unlike _update_by_query, the script is allowed to modify the document’s metadata. This example bumps the version of the source document:

POST _reindex
{
  "source": {
    "index": "my-index-000001"
  },
  "dest": {
    "index": "my-new-index-000001",
    "version_type": "external"
  },
  "script": {
    "source": "if (ctx._source.foo == 'bar') {ctx._version++; ctx._source.remove('foo')}",
    "lang": "painless"
  }
}

Just as in _update_by_query, you can set ctx.op to change the operation that is executed on the destination:

Setting ctx.op to anything else will return an error, as will setting any other field in ctx.

Think of the possibilities! Just be careful; you are able to change:

Setting _version to null or clearing it from the ctx map is just like not sending the version in an indexing request; it will cause the document to be overwritten in the destination regardless of the version on the target or the version type you use in the _reindex request.

Reindex from remote supports configurable SSL settings. These must be specified in the elasticsearch.yml file, with the exception of the secure settings, which you add in the Elasticsearch keystore. It is not possible to configure SSL in the body of the _reindex request.

The following settings are supported: