What causes "Fail to execute es request" in SonarSource/sonarqube?

Read the wrapped cause and the appended request details to identify the underlying ES failure.

SonarSource/sonarqube · error · ElasticsearchException

Fail to execute es request

Error message

Fail to execute es request

What it means

EsClient.execute wraps every Elasticsearch request through the REST client; any exception thrown by executor.execute() (IOException, connection refused, timeouts, index errors surfaced as ElasticsearchStatusException) is rethrown as an ElasticsearchException prefixed with "Fail to execute es request" plus request details from the supplier, preserving the cause.

Source

Thrown at server/sonar-server-common/src/main/java/org/sonar/server/es/EsClient.java:357

        keyStore.load(is, keyStorePassword == null ? null : keyStorePassword.toCharArray());
      }
      SSLContextBuilder sslBuilder = SSLContexts.custom().loadTrustMaterial(keyStore, null);
      return sslBuilder.build();
    } catch (IOException | GeneralSecurityException e) {
      throw new IllegalStateException("Failed to setup SSL context on ES client", e);
    }
  }

  <R> R execute(EsRequestExecutor<R> executor) {
    return execute(executor, () -> "");
  }

  <R> R execute(EsRequestExecutor<R> executor, Supplier<String> requestDetails) {
    Profiler profiler = Profiler.createIfTrace(EsClient.LOGGER).start();
    try {
      return executor.execute();
    } catch (Exception e) {
      throw new ElasticsearchException("Fail to execute es request" + requestDetails.get(), e);
    } finally {
      if (profiler.isTraceEnabled()) {
        profiler.stopTrace(requestDetails.get());
      }
    }
  }

  @FunctionalInterface
  interface EsRequestExecutor<R> {
    R execute() throws IOException;
  }
}

View on GitHub (pinned to 184c821202)

Solutions

Read the wrapped cause and the appended request details to identify the underlying ES failure.
Check cluster health (`GET _cluster/health`) and that SonarQube can reach the ES host/port.
Verify client and server Elasticsearch versions are compatible.
Check disk watermarks and index read-only blocks if writes fail.
Fix or regenerate the query/mapping if the cause indicates a parse/mapping error.

Example fix

// before
esClient.prepareSearch("components").setQuery(wrongQuery);
// after: validate query against the index mapping first
// GET /components/_mapping  then adjust field names/types in the query

Defensive patterns

Strategy: retry

Validate before calling

// Preflight cluster health before requests:
// curl -s http://es-host:9200/_cluster/health | jq .status  # expect green/yellow

Try / catch

try {
  return esClient.execute(executor, () -> "search components");
} catch (ElasticsearchException e) {
  if (e.getCause() instanceof ConnectException || e.getCause() instanceof SocketTimeoutException) {
    return retryWithBackoff(executor, 3);
  }
  throw e;
}

Prevention

Monitor ES cluster health and disk watermarks.
Keep SonarQube and Elasticsearch versions compatible.
Use request details suppliers to make failures diagnosable.
Retry idempotent read requests with exponential backoff.

When it happens

Trigger: Any ES-backed operation (search, indexing, deleteByQuery) when the cluster is unreachable, the node is red, a mapping/query is invalid, the index is missing, or a timeout occurs.

Common situations: Elasticsearch down or restarting; version incompatibility between client and cluster; malformed queries after upgrade; disk watermark exceeded making the index read-only; network/firewall blocks between SonarQube and ES nodes.

Understand the failure class

Background: Database query failed: Internal Server Error 500s wrapping SQL, Prisma, and connection failures — what to check first — this error's family across 16 libraries.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of SonarSource/sonarqube@184c821202 (2026-09-09). Data as JSON: /api/errors/414871ce2518b1ac. Report an issue: GitHub.