Elasticsearch

Document GET Operation Latency

info
latencyUpdated Mar 2, 2026

High latency for document GET operations indicates potential issues with routing, shard location, or storage performance when retrieving specific documents by ID.

How to detect:

elasticsearch.node.operations.get.time showing elevated latency (p95 > 100ms) with increasing elasticsearch.node.operations.get.completed volume

Recommended action:

Analyze GET operation patterns: (1) Check if requests use real-time:true forcing refresh, (2) Verify routing keys used for consistent shard routing, (3) Monitor disk I/O via elasticsearch.node.disk.io.read - slow storage degrades GET performance. For frequent GET operations, ensure documents are in OS page cache (monitor elasticsearch.os.memory). Consider using _mget for bulk retrieval instead of individual GETs. Review index settings - GET bypasses query cache but benefits from OS cache and SSD storage. Check elasticsearch.node.operations.current to see if queue depth is building.