---
title: Long running index task
description: Describes what AutoOps detects and surfaces with the Long running index task insight: An individual indexing task has run longer than your configured threshold.
url: https://www.elastic.co/docs/reference/autoops-insights/elasticsearch/long_running_index_task
products:
  - Elastic Cloud Enterprise
  - Elastic Cloud Hosted
  - Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes
  - Elasticsearch
applies_to:
  - Elastic Cloud Hosted: Generally available
  - Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes: Generally available
  - Elastic Cloud Enterprise: Generally available
  - Self-managed Elastic deployments: Generally available
---

# Long running index task
An individual indexing task has run longer than your configured threshold. Single-document indexing can stall when documents are large, mappings must update, ingest pipelines are heavy, or nodes are under resource pressure.
<note>
  For a complete list of insights, refer to [AutoOps insights](https://www.elastic.co/docs/reference/autoops-insights/elasticsearch).
</note>


## Insight details


| Field     | Value                                   |
|-----------|-----------------------------------------|
| Component | Elasticsearch                           |
| Severity  | Medium                                  |
| Scope     | Node                                    |
| Domains   | performance, indexing, stability, tasks |


## Customization settings

You can customize these settings to adjust when AutoOps detects this event and presents the insight. Refer to [AutoOps event settings](https://docs-edge.elastic.dev/docs/deploy-manage/monitor/autoops/ec-autoops-event-settings) for details.
The default customization settings are:

| Setting                                      | Type    | Default |
|----------------------------------------------|---------|---------|
| Long running index task threshold in minutes | Integer | `1`     |


## Example: What you might see in AutoOps

The following is an example of what you might see when this insight is triggered. Real insights use live data and links from your deployment or cluster.

### Long running index task


#### What was detected

There are 3 tasks that ran more than the 12 minutes threshold.
The longest task running start time was 2026-03-15T14:22:00 UTC time.
The longest task running time is 48 minutes.

#### Recommendations

<note>
  AutoOps shows different recommendations depending on how their conditions match your deployment or cluster.
</note>

<dropdown title="Cancel long-running tasks">
  **Condition**: Shown when one or more long-running tasks are cancellable.Cancel long-running tasks (es-data-01:4521, es-data-02:7788) that are affecting cluster stability. Use the action below.
  ```json
  ```

  <note>
    Requires the `manage cluster` privilege. Requires Elasticsearch 8.0.0 or later. This action changes cluster or index configuration.
  </note>
</dropdown>


#### Background and impact

Single-document indexing tasks update Lucene segments, apply mappings, and might run ingest or inference processors. When one document takes much longer than usual, the node might be under CPU, memory, or I/O pressure, or the document might trigger costly mapping or pipeline work.
Large or deeply nested documents, dynamic mapping updates, and heavy ingest or ML processors are frequent causes. If indexing tasks stay slow, write throughput and cluster stability on the affected nodes can suffer.

## Guide

[Tune for indexing speed](https://docs-edge.elastic.dev/docs/deploy-manage/production-guidance/optimize-performance/indexing-speed)