Index Builds on Populated Collections

On this page

Behavior

Index Build Impact on Database Performance
Index Builds in Replicated Environments
Build Failure and Recovery
Monitor In Progress Index Builds
Terminate In Progress Index Builds
Index Build Process

Index builds use an optimized build process that holds an exclusive lock on the collection at the beginning and end of the index build. The rest of the build process yields to interleaving read and write operations. For a detailed description of index build process and locking behavior, see Index Build Process.

Index builds on a replica set or sharded cluster build simultaneously across all data-bearing replica set members. The primary requires a minimum number of data-bearing voting members (i.e. commit quorum), including itself, that must complete the build before marking the index as ready for use. A "voting" member is any replica set member where members[n].votes is greater than 0. See Index Builds in Replicated Environments for more information.

Starting in MongoDB 7.1, index builds are improved with faster error reporting and increased failure resilience. You can also set the minimum available disk space required for index builds using the new indexBuildMinAvailableDiskSpaceMB parameter, which stops index builds if disk space is too low.

The following table compares the index build behavior starting in MongoDB 7.1 with earlier versions.

Behavior Starting in MongoDB 7.1	Behavior in Earlier MongoDB Versions
Index errors found during the collection scan phase, except duplicate key errors, are returned immediately and then the index build stops. Earlier MongoDB versions return errors in the commit phase, which occurs near the end of the index build. MongoDB 7.1 helps you to rapidly diagnose index errors. For example, if an incompatible index value format is found, the error is returned to you immediately.	Index build errors can take a long time to be returned compared to MongoDB 7.1 because the errors are returned near the end of the index build in the commit phase.
Increased resilience for your deployment. If an index build error occurs, a secondary member can request that the primary member stop an index build and the secondary member does not crash. A request to stop an index build is not always possible: if a member has already voted to commit the index, then the secondary cannot request that the index build stop and the secondary crashes (similar to MongoDB 7.0 and earlier).	An index build error can cause a secondary member to crash.
Improved disk space management for index builds. An index build may be automatically stopped if the available disk space is below the minimum specified in the `indexBuildMinAvailableDiskSpaceMB` parameter. If a member has already voted to commit the index, then the index build is not stopped.	An index build is not stopped if there is insufficient available disk space.

Note

For information about creating indexes in Atlas, refer to the index management page in the Atlas documentation.

Behavior

Comparison to Foreground and Background Builds

Previous versions of MongoDB supported building indexes either in the foreground or background. Foreground index builds were fast and produced more efficient index data structures, but required blocking all read-write access to the parent database of the collection being indexed for the duration of the build. Background index builds were slower and had less efficient results, but allowed read-write access to the database and its collections during the build process.

Index builds now obtain an exclusive lock on only the collection being indexed during the start and end of the build process to protect metadata changes. The rest of the build process uses the yielding behavior of background index builds to maximize read-write access to the collection during the build. Index builds still produce efficient index data structures despite the more permissive locking behavior.

The optimized index build performance is at least on par with background index builds. For workloads with few or no updates received during the build process, optimized index builds can be as fast as a foreground index build on that same data.

Use db.currentOp() to monitor the progress of ongoing index builds.

MongoDB ignores the background index build option if specified to createIndexes or its shell helpers createIndex() and createIndexes().

Constraint Violations During Index Build

For indexes that enforce constraints on the collection, such as unique indexes, the mongod checks all pre-existing and concurrently-written documents for violations of those constraints after the index build completes. Documents that violate the index constraints can exist during the index build. If any documents violate the index constraints at the end of the build, the mongod terminates the build and throws an error.

For example, consider a populated collection inventory. An administrator wants to create a unique index on the product_sku field. If any documents in the collection have duplicate values for product_sku, the index build can still start successfully. If any violations still exist at the end of the build, the mongod terminates the build and throws an error.

Similarly, an application can successfully write documents to the inventory collection with duplicate values of product_sku while the index build is in progress. If any violations still exist at the end of the build, the mongod terminates the build and throws an error.

To mitigate the risk of index build failure due to constraint violations:

Validate that no documents in the collection violate the index constraints.
Stop all writes to the collection from applications that cannot guarantee violation-free write operations.

Sharded Collections

For a sharded collection distributed across multiple shards, one or more shards may contain a chunk with duplicate documents. As such, the create index operation may succeed on some of the shards (i.e. the ones without duplicates) but not on others (i.e. the ones with duplicates). To avoid leaving inconsistent indexes across shards, you can issue the db.collection.dropIndex() from a mongos to drop the index from the collection.

To mitigate the risk of this occurrence, before creating the index:

Validate that no documents in the collection violate the index constraints.
Stop all writes to the collection from applications that cannot guarantee violation-free write operations.

Tip

Maximum Concurrent Index Builds

By default, the server allows up to three concurrent index builds. To change the number of allowed concurrent index builds, modify the maxNumActiveUserIndexBuilds parameter.

If the number of concurrent index builds reaches the limit specified by maxNumActiveUserIndexBuilds, the server blocks additional index builds until the number of concurrent index builds drops below the limit.

Index Build Impact on Database Performance

Index Builds During Write-Heavy Workloads

Building indexes during time periods where the target collection is under heavy write load can result in reduced write performance and longer index builds.

Consider designating a maintenance window during which applications stop or reduce write operations against the collection. Start the index build during this maintenance window to mitigate the potential negative impact of the build process.

Insufficient Available System Memory (RAM)

createIndexes supports building one or more indexes on a collection. createIndexes uses a combination of memory and temporary files on disk to complete index builds. The default limit on memory usage for createIndexes is 200 megabytes, shared between all indexes built using a single createIndexes command. Once the memory limit is reached, createIndexes uses temporary disk files in a subdirectory named _tmp within the --dbpath directory to complete the build.

You can override the memory limit by setting the maxIndexBuildMemoryUsageMegabytes server parameter. Setting a higher memory limit may result in faster completion of index builds. However, setting this limit too high relative to the unused RAM on your system can result in memory exhaustion and server shutdown.

If the host machine has limited available free RAM, you may need to schedule a maintenance period to increase the total system RAM before you can modify the mongod RAM usage.

Index Builds in Replicated Environments

Note

Requires featureCompatibilityVersion 4.4+

Each mongod in the replica set or sharded cluster must have featureCompatibilityVersion set to at least 4.4 to start index builds simultaneously across replica set members.

Index builds on a replica set or sharded cluster build simultaneously across all data-bearing replica set members. For sharded clusters, the index build occurs only on shards containing data for the collection being indexed. The primary requires a minimum number of data-bearing voting members (i.e commit quorum), including itself, that must complete the build before marking the index as ready for use.

Important

If a data-bearing voting node becomes unreachable and the commitQuorum is set to the default votingMembers, index builds can hang until that node comes back online.

The build process is summarized as follows:

The primary receives the createIndexes command and immediately creates a "startIndexBuild" oplog entry associated with the index build.
The secondaries start the index build after they replicate the "startIndexBuild" oplog entry.
Each member "votes" to commit the build once it finishes indexing data in the collection.
Secondary members continue to process any new write operations into the index while waiting for the primary to confirm a quorum of votes.
When the primary has a quorum of votes, it checks for any key constraint violations such as duplicate key errors.
- If there are no key constraint violations, the primary completes the index build, marks the index as ready for use, and creates an associated "commitIndexBuild" oplog entry.
- If there are any key constraint violations, the index build fails. The primary aborts the index build and creates an associated "abortIndexBuild" oplog entry.
The secondaries replicate the "commitIndexBuild" oplog entry and complete the index build.
If the secondaries instead replicate an "abortIndexBuild" oplog entry, they abort the index build and discard the build job.

For sharded clusters, the index build occurs only on shards containing data for the collection being indexed.

For a more detailed description of the index build process, see Index Build Process.

By default, index builds use a commit quorum of "votingMembers", or all data-bearing voting members. To start an index build with a non-default commit quorum, specify the commitQuorum parameter to createIndexes or its shell helpers db.collection.createIndex() and db.collection.createIndexes().

To modify the commit quorum required for an in-progress simultaneous index build, use the setIndexCommitQuorum command.

Note

Index builds can impact replica set performance. For workloads which cannot tolerate performance decrease due to index builds, consider performing a rolling index build process. Rolling index builds take at most one replica set member out at a time, starting with the secondary members, and builds the index on that member as a standalone. Rolling index builds require at least one replica set election.

For rolling index builds on replica sets, see Rolling Index Builds on Replica Sets.
For rolling index builds on sharded clusters, see Rolling Index Builds on Sharded Clusters.

Commit Quorum Contrasted with Write Concern

There are important differences between commit quorums and write concerns:

Index builds use commit quorums.
Write operations use write concerns.

Each data-bearing node in a cluster is a voting member.

The commit quorum specifies how many data-bearing voting members, or which voting members, including the primary, must be prepared to commit a simultaneous index build before the primary will execute the commit.

The write concern is the level of acknowledgment that the write has propagated to the specified number of instances.

Changed in version 8.0: The commit quorum specifies how many nodes must be ready to finish the index build before the primary commits the index build. In contrast, when the primary has committed the index build, the write concern specifies how many nodes must replicate the index build oplog entry before the command returns success.

In previous releases, when the primary committed the index build, the write concern specified how many nodes must finish the index build before the command returned success.

Build Failure and Recovery

Interrupted Index Builds on a Primary `mongod`

Starting in MongoDB 5.0, if the primary mongod performs a clean shutdown with "force" : true or receives a SIGTERM signal during an index build and the commitQuorum is set to the default votingMembers, then the index build progress is saved to disk. The mongod automatically recovers the index build when it is restarted and continues from the saved checkpoint. In earlier versions, if the index build is interrupted, it has to be restarted from the beginning.

Interrupted Index Builds on a Secondary `mongod`

Starting in MongoDB 5.0, if a secondary mongod performs a clean shutdown with "force" : true or receives a SIGTERM signal during an index build and the commitQuorum is set to the default votingMembers, then the index build progress is saved to disk. The mongod automatically recovers the index build when it is restarted and continues from the saved checkpoint. In earlier versions, if the index build is interrupted, it has to be restarted from the beginning.

The mongod can perform the startup process while the recovering index builds.

If you restart the mongod as a standalone (i.e. removing or commenting out replication.replSetName or omitting --replSetName), the mongod cannot restart the index build. The build remains in a paused state until it is manually dropped.

Interrupted Index Builds on Standalone `mongod`

If the mongod shuts down during the index build, the index build job and all progress is lost. Restarting the mongod does not restart the index build. You must re-issue the createIndex() operation to restart the index build.

Rollbacks during Build Process

Starting in MongoDB 5.0, if a node is rolled back to a prior state during the index build, the index build progress is saved to disk. If there is still work to be done when the rollback concludes, the mongod automatically recovers the index build and continues from the saved checkpoint.

MongoDB can pause an in-progress index build to perform a rollback.

If the rollback does not revert the index build, MongoDB restarts the index build after completing the rollback.
If the rollback reverts the index build, you must re-create the index or indexes after the rollback completes.

Index Consistency Checks for Sharded Collections

A sharded collection has an inconsistent index if the collection does not have the exact same indexes (including the index options) on each shard that contains chunks for the collection. Although inconsistent indexes should not occur during normal operations, inconsistent indexes can occur, such as:

When a user is creating an index with a unique key constraint and one shard contains a chunk with duplicate documents. In such cases, the create index operation may succeed on the shards without duplicates but not on the shard with duplicates.
When a user is creating an index across the shards in a rolling manner (i.e. manually building the index one by one across the shards) but either fails to build the index for an associated shard or incorrectly builds an index with different specification.

The config server primary periodically checks for index inconsistencies across the shards for sharded collections. To configure these periodic checks, see enableShardedIndexConsistencyCheck and shardedIndexConsistencyCheckIntervalMS.

The command serverStatus returns the field shardedIndexConsistency to report on index inconsistencies when run on the config server primary.

To check if a sharded collection has inconsistent indexes, see Find Inconsistent Indexes Across Shards.

Monitor In Progress Index Builds

To see the status of an index build operation, you can use the db.currentOp() method in mongosh. To filter the current operations for index creation operations, see Active Indexing Operations for an example.

The msg field includes a percentage-complete measurement of the current stage in the index build process.

Observe Stopped and Resumed Index Builds in the Logs

While an index is being built, progress is written to the MongoDB log. If an index build is stopped and resumed there will be log messages with fields like these:

 "msg":"Index build: wrote resumable state to disk",
 "msg":"Found index from unfinished build",

Terminate In Progress Index Builds

Use the dropIndexes command or its shell helpers dropIndex() or dropIndexes() to terminate an in-progress index build. See Stop In-Progress Index Builds for more information.

Do not use killOp to terminate an in-progress index builds in replica sets or sharded clusters.

Index Build Process

The following table describes each stage of the index build process:

Stage	Description
Lock	The `mongod` obtains an exclusive `X` lock on the the collection being indexed. This blocks all read and write operations on the collection, including the application of any replicated write operations or metadata commands that target the collection. The `mongod` does not yield this lock.
Initialization	The `mongod` creates three data structures at this initial state: The initial index metadata entry. A temporary table ("side writes table") that stores keys generated from writes to the collection being indexed during the build process. A temporary table ("constraint violation table") for all documents that may cause a key generation error. Key generation errors occur when a document has invalid keys for the indexed fields. For example, a document with duplicate field values when building a unique index or malformed GeoJSON objects when building a 2dsphere index.
Lock	The `mongod` downgrades the exclusive `X` collection lock to an intent exclusive `IX` lock. The `mongod` periodically yields this lock to interleaving read and write operations.
Scan Collection	For each document in the collection, the `mongod` generates a key for that document and dumps the key into an external sorter. If the `mongod` encounters a key generation error while generating a key during the collection scan, it stores that key in the constraint violation table for later processing. If the `mongod` encounters any other error while generating a key, the build fails with an error. Once the `mongod` completes the collection scan, it dumps the sorted keys into the index.
Process Side Writes Table	The `mongod` drains the side write table using first-in-first-out priority. If the `mongod` encounters a key generation error while processing a key in the side write table, it stores that key in the constraint violation table for later processing. If the `mongod` encounters any other error while processing a key, the build fails with an error. For each document written to the collection during the build process, the `mongod` generates a key for that document and stores it in the side write table for later processing. The `mongod` uses a snapshot system to set a limit to the number of keys to process.
Vote and Wait for Commit Quorum	A `mongod` that is not part of a replica set skips this stage. The `mongod` submits a "vote" to the primary to commit the index. Specifically, it writes the "vote" to an internal replicated collection on the primary. If the `mongod` is the primary, it waits until it has a commit quorum of votes (all voting data-bearing members by default) before continuing the index build process. If the `mongod` is a secondary, it waits until it replicates either a "commitIndexBuild" or "abortIndexBuild" oplog entry: If the `mongod` replicates a "commitIndexBuild" oplog entry, it finishes draining the side writes table and moves to the next stage in the index build process. If the `mongod` replicates an "abortIndexBuild" oplog entry, it aborts the index build and discards the build job. While waiting for commit quorum, the `mongod` adds any additional keys generated from write operations to the collection being indexed to the side writes table and periodically drains the table.
Lock	The `mongod` upgrades the intent exclusive `IX` lock on the collection to a shared `S` lock. This blocks all write operations to the collection, including the application of any replicated write operations or metadata commands that target the collection.
Finish Processing Temporary Side Writes Table	The `mongod` continues draining remaining records in the side writes table. The `mongod` may pause replication during this stage. If the `mongod` encounters a key generation error while processing a key in the side write table, it stores that key in the constraint violation table for later processing. If the `mongod` encounters any other error while processing a key, the build fails with an error.
Lock	The `mongod` upgrades the shared `S` lock on the collection to an exclusive `X` lock on the collection. This blocks all read and write operations on the collection, including the application of any replicated write operations or metadata commands that target the collection. The `mongod` does not yield this lock.
Drop Side Write Table	The `mongod` applies any remaining operations in the side writes table before dropping it. If the `mongod` encounters a key generation error while processing a key in the side write table, it stores that key in the constraint violation table for later processing. If the `mongod` encounters any other error while processing a key, the build fails with an error. At this point, the index includes all data written to the collection.
Process Constraint Violation Table	If the `mongod` is the primary, it drains the constraint violation table using first-in-first-out priority. If no keys in the constraint violation table produce a key generation error or if the table is empty, the `mongod` drops the table and creates a "commitIndexBuild" oplog entry. Secondaries can complete the associated index build after replicating the oplog entry. If any key in the constraint violation table still produces a key generation error, the `mongod` aborts the build and throws an error. The `mongod` creates an associated "abortIndexBuild" oplog entry to indicate that secondaries should abort and discard the index build job. If the `mongod` is a secondary, it drops the constraint violation table. Since the primary must successfully drain the constraint violation table prior to creating the "commitOplogEntry" oplog entry, the secondary can safely assume that no violations exist.
Mark the Index as Ready	The `mongod` updates the index metadata to mark the index as ready for use.
Lock	The `mongod` releases the `X` lock on the collection.

Index Builds on Populated Collections

Note

Behavior

Comparison to Foreground and Background Builds

Constraint Violations During Index Build

Sharded Collections

Tip

See also:

Maximum Concurrent Index Builds

Index Build Impact on Database Performance

Index Builds During Write-Heavy Workloads

Insufficient Available System Memory (RAM)

Index Builds in Replicated Environments

Note

Requires featureCompatibilityVersion 4.4+

Important

Note

Commit Quorum Contrasted with Write Concern

Build Failure and Recovery

Interrupted Index Builds on a Primary `mongod`

Interrupted Index Builds on a Secondary `mongod`

Interrupted Index Builds on Standalone `mongod`

Rollbacks during Build Process

Index Consistency Checks for Sharded Collections

Monitor In Progress Index Builds

Observe Stopped and Resumed Index Builds in the Logs

Terminate In Progress Index Builds

Index Build Process

Tip

See also:

Note

Behavior

Comparison to Foreground and Background Builds

Constraint Violations During Index Build

Sharded Collections

Tip

See also:

Maximum Concurrent Index Builds

Index Build Impact on Database Performance

Index Builds During Write-Heavy Workloads

Insufficient Available System Memory (RAM)

Index Builds in Replicated Environments

Note

Requires featureCompatibilityVersion 4.4+

Important

Note

Commit Quorum Contrasted with Write Concern

Build Failure and Recovery

Interrupted Index Builds on a Primary mongod

Interrupted Index Builds on a Secondary mongod

Interrupted Index Builds on Standalone mongod

Rollbacks during Build Process

Index Consistency Checks for Sharded Collections

Monitor In Progress Index Builds

Observe Stopped and Resumed Index Builds in the Logs

Terminate In Progress Index Builds

Index Build Process

Tip

See also:

Interrupted Index Builds on a Primary `mongod`

Interrupted Index Builds on a Secondary `mongod`

Interrupted Index Builds on Standalone `mongod`