Here’s a twist on the old adage: A ounce of prevention is worth a kiloton of user satisfaction.

It’s no secret that we’re big fans of Elasticsearch. But we’ve seen more than a few customers crash their clusters—in a variety of ways. Most of those failures are quite preventable. It’s often a matter of a simple misunderstanding, and the remedy is usually fairly easy to apply.

As we did in our recent article on field data, we invite you to think through a number of other potential problems. With little effort, you can apply several key practices that will improve stability and improve performance for your ES cluster.

The popularity of Elasticsearch is largely attributable to the ease with which a user can approach and begin using it. Although it’s true that a developer can ramp up quickly to some of the basic skills in Elasticsearch, it can be quite difficult to diagnose and solve problems. We know all too well that there are many common pitfalls that new and intermediate users encounter.

You’ll be glad to know that this article provides you with a number of suggestions, tips, and tricks to help ease your journey and reduce frustration. We consider this information to be elemental for new Elasticsearch users, and we also expect that intermediate users will find much of value here.