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Error Log: Search_phase_execution_exception – The vague search failure

By November 19, 2025No Comments

Error Log: This is a high-level wrapper error. It will appear as the main type in an error response, but the real details are inside the root_cause.
JSON

{
  "error": {
    "root_cause": [
      {
        "type": "illegal_argument_exception", // <-- The REAL problem
        "reason": "Text fields are not optimised for operations that require..." 
      }
    ],
    "type": "search_phase_execution_exception", // <-- The wrapper
    "reason": "all shards failed", // Often, but not always, present
    "phase": "query", // Or "fetch"
    "grouped": true,
    "failed_shards": [
      // ...
    ]
  },
  "status": 503 // Or 400, 500
}

Why… is this happening? A SearchPhaseExecutionException means your search query failed during one of the two phases of its lifecycle. It’s a general error, and you must look at the root_cause to understand the actual problem.

The two phases are:

  1. Query Phase: This is the most common failure point. The node receiving your request sends the query to all the shards that hold the data. If any shard fails to run the query (due to a syntax error, a circuit breaker, etc.), it can trigger this exception.
  2. Fetch Phase: If the query phase succeeds, the node gathers the top document IDs. It then “fetches” the actual _source content for those documents from the relevant shards. This phase can fail if a shard becomes unavailable or has an issue retrieving the document data after the query phase finished.

Think of this like “all shards failed”—it’s a symptom, not the cause.

Best Practice:

  1. Go to the root_cause: This is the most important rule. The root_cause array in the JSON response will contain the specific error, such as:
    • failed_to_parse_query
    • illegal_argument_exception
    • circuit_breaking_exception
  2. Check the phase: Knowing if it failed in the query or fetch phase helps narrow down the problem. query phase failures are usually related to your query syntax or the data being queried. fetch phase failures are rarer and often point to shard or node-level issues.
  3. Check Node Logs: If the root cause is a generic null_pointer_exception or something else unhelpful, the full, detailed stack trace will be in the opensearch.log file on the data node that processed the failing shard.What else can I do? If you’re stuck on a SearchPhaseExecutionException and the root cause isn’t clear, the OpenSearch community forums are a great place to post your query and the full error response. You can also contact us in The OpenSearch Slack Channel in #General.

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