Configuring cluster logging storage

A persistent volume is required for each Elasticsearch deployment to have one data volume per data node. On OpenShift Container Platform this is achieved using persistent volume claims.

The Elasticsearch Operator names the PVCs using the Elasticsearch resource name. Refer to Persistent Elasticsearch Storage for more details.

Fluentd ships any logs from systemd journal and /var/log/containers/ to Elasticsearch.

Therefore, consider how much data you need in advance and that you are aggregating application log data. Some Elasticsearch users have found that it is necessary to keep absolute storage consumption around 50% and below 70% at all times. This helps to avoid Elasticsearch becoming unresponsive during large merge operations.

By default, at 85% Elasticsearch stops allocating new data to the node, at 90% Elasticsearch attempts to relocate existing shards from that node to other nodes if possible. But if no nodes have free capacity below 85%, Elasticsearch effectively rejects creating new indices and becomes RED.