Configure Elastic Plans
Elastic plans for Alibaba Cloud Elasticsearch automatically scale data nodes out to a target capacity during peak hours and reclaim them when the time period ends. This topic describes how to create and manage elastic plans and view execution results.
Prerequisites
Before you create or update an elastic plan, the instance and plan configuration must meet the following requirements.
| Category | Description |
| Elastic target | Only data node elasticity is supported. |
| Cluster version | Only clusters of versions 7.10, 8.17, and 9.4 are supported, and the cluster must have the Openstore storage-compute separation (high-performance retrieval) feature enabled. |
| Instance architecture | The instance must have data nodes, dedicated master nodes, and client nodes. |
| Available regions | The primary zone of the cluster must be within the following: Zone B/J/K in China (Hangzhou); Zone B/C/D in China (Hong Kong); Zone K/F/I in Beijing; Zone E/G/L in Shanghai; Zone C/D/E in Shenzhen; Zone B/C in Zhangjiakou. |
| Resource utilization | The recent resource utilization of the instance must be within the healthy range: CPU and disk utilization must not exceed 75%, average heap utilization must not exceed 75%, and peak heap utilization must not exceed 85%. If cluster metrics exceed the thresholds, elastic plans cannot be created temporarily. |
| Target capacity | The target number of data nodes per zone must be greater than 0 and cannot exceed the current number of data nodes per zone. |
| Master node specifications | The dedicated master node specifications must support the post-scale-out data node scale: when the total number of data nodes does not exceed 10, the total master node specifications must be at least 6 vCPU/24 GB; does not exceed 30, at least 12 vCPU/48 GB; does not exceed 50, at least 24 vCPU/96 GB; exceeds 50, at least 48 vCPU/192 GB. If the requirements are not met, upgrade the dedicated master node specifications or reduce the target capacity first. |
| Time period | The start time and end time must be set on the hour. The end time must be later than the start time and can be set to 24:00 at the latest. The start time and time zone cannot be modified while the plan is active. |
| Specific date | When the repeat strategy is set to Once Only, the execution date cannot be earlier than the current date. If the current day is selected, the time must be later than the current time. |
| Plan count | A maximum of 5 elastic plans can be created for a single instance. |
Create an elastic plan
Elastic node resources require approximately 1 hour of warm-up to be ready. Create the plan at least 1 hour before peak hours to avoid business impact caused by resources not being ready in time.
Elastic plans use the pay-as-you-go billing method. You are charged only for elastic nodes actually delivered during plan execution. Charges are calculated separately from the costs of the instance's original baseline specifications. For more information, see Billing rules.
Log on to the Alibaba Cloud Elasticsearch console.
In the left-side navigation pane, click Elasticsearch Clusters, select the region where the instance resides at the top, and then click the target instance ID.
In the left-side navigation pane, choose Configuration and Management > Scaling Plans.
On the Scaling Plans tab, click Create Scaling Plan.
In the Create Scaling Plan panel, configure the following parameters, and then click OK.
Plan NameDescriptionElastic ModeTime-based ScalingTime PeriodRecurrence
Daily
CustomCustom Repeat Days
Once
Target Data Nodes per ZoneElastic Node Specifications
| Parameter | Description |
| Plan Name | The name of the plan. The name must be unique within the same instance, contain only lowercase letters, digits, and hyphens, and can be up to 64 characters. |
| Description | The description of the plan. Can be up to 256 characters. |
| Elastic Mode | Fixed and cannot be modified. |
| Time Period | The start time and end time when the plan takes effect, both set on the hour. The end time must be later than the start time and can be set to 24:00 at the latest. |
| Recurrence | The repeat strategy of the plan. Daily: Runs within the set time period every day. Custom: After selecting this option, select one or more days from Monday to Sunday in the Custom Repeat Days field. Once: Runs only once. The execution date cannot be earlier than the current date. If the current day is selected, the time must be later than the current time. |
| Target Data Nodes per Zone | The target number of data nodes per zone to scale out to when the plan takes effect. The value must be greater than 0 and cannot exceed the current number of data nodes per zone. |
| Elastic Node Specifications | Read-only. The specifications of allocated elastic nodes are the same as those of the current data nodes and do not need to be configured. |
After the plan is created successfully, it appears in the elastic plan list. Verify that the plan status shows Enabled and that the next execution time matches your expected schedule. The list also displays the elastic mode, execution strategy, time zone offset, execution duration, and target data nodes per zone.
Manage elastic plans
In the Actions column of the elastic plan list, you can perform the following operations on a single plan. You can also select one or more plans and perform batch operations using Bulk Enable, Bulk Disable, or Bulk Delete at the bottom of the list.
Disable
| Operation | Description |
| Enable | After enabling, the plan starts to run automatically at the configured interval. |
| Disable | After disabling, the plan no longer triggers. Already scaled-out nodes are handled according to the scale-in protection rules. |
| Edit | Modify the plan configuration. After modification, approximately 1 hour of warm-up is required before the change takes effect. If the time period set for the plan has already passed after the warm-up, execution is deferred to the next cycle. The start time and time zone cannot be modified while the plan is active. |
| Delete | Cannot be recovered after deletion. |
View execution results
View execution history
On the elastic plan page, click the Execution History tab.
View the execution time, trigger type, operation type, and delivery status of each plan trigger. Delivery status options include: All Delivered Successfully, Partially Delivered, Insufficient Inventory, Instance Status Not Met, and Delivery Failed. When confirming whether a plan has taken effect or troubleshooting why capacity changes did not meet expectations, check the execution history first.
View Event Center: In the left-side navigation pane of the Elasticsearch console, click Event Center, select System Change Events, and view the scale-out, scale-in, and execution exception events triggered by elastic plans. Events show the instance ID, event level, event status, event description, occurrence time, plan execution time, and execution end time.