Elastic search memoryerror on bulk insert - python-2.7

Question

Im inserting 5000 records at once into elastic search
Total Size of these records is: 33936 (I got this using sys.getsizeof())
Elastic Search version: 1.5.0
Python 2.7
Ubuntu
Here is the following error
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "run_indexing.py", line 67, in <module>
index_policy_content(datatable, source, policyids)
File "run_indexing.py", line 60, in index_policy_content
bulk(elasticsearch_instance, actions)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/elasticsearch/helpers.py", line 148, in bulk
for ok, item in streaming_bulk(client, actions, **kwargs):
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/elasticsearch/helpers.py", line 107, in streaming_bulk
resp = client.bulk(bulk_actions, **kwargs)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/elasticsearch/client/utils.py", line 70, in _wrapped
return func(*args, params=params, **kwargs)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/elasticsearch/client/__init__.py", line 568, in bulk
params=params, body=self._bulk_body(body))
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/elasticsearch/transport.py", line 259, in perform_request
body = body.encode('utf-8')
MemoryError
Please help me resolve the issue.
Thanks & Regards,
Afroze

Answer 1

If I had to guess, I'd say this memory error is happening within python as it loads and serializes its data. Try cutting way back on the batch sizes until you get something that works, and then binary search upward until it fails again. That should help you figure out a safe batch size to use.
(Other useful information you might want to include: amount of memory in the server you're running your python process on, amount of memory for your elasticsearch server node(s), amount of heap allocated to Java.)