Briefly, this error occurs when Elasticsearch fails to retrieve the Data Encryption Key (DEK) with the given ID. This could be due to a misconfiguration, network issues, or the DEK might not exist. To resolve this, you can check the DEK ID for any errors, ensure the DEK exists, and verify your network connectivity. Also, check your Elasticsearch configuration to ensure it’s correctly set up for encryption. If the problem persists, consider restarting your Elasticsearch cluster, but ensure you have a backup as a precaution.
This guide will help you check for common problems that cause the log ” Unexpected exception retrieving DEK [” + dekId + “] ” to appear. To understand the issues related to this log, read the explanation below about the following Elasticsearch concepts: repositories, plugin.
Overview
An Elasticsearch snapshot provides a backup mechanism that takes the current state and data in the cluster and saves it to a repository (read snapshot for more information). The backup process requires a repository to be created first. The repository needs to be registered using the _snapshot endpoint, and multiple repositories can be created per cluster. The following repository types are supported:
Repository types
| Repository type | Configuration type |
|---|---|
| Shared file system | Type: “fs” |
| S3 | Type : “s3” |
| HDFS | Type :“hdfs” |
| Azure | Type: “azure” |
| Google Cloud Storage | Type : “gcs” |
Examples
To register an “fs” repository:
PUT _snapshot/my_repo_01
{
"type": "fs",
"settings": {
"location": "/mnt/my_repo_dir"
}
}Notes and good things to know
- S3, HDFS, Azure and Google Cloud require a relevant plugin to be installed before it can be used for a snapshot.
- The setting, path.repo: /mnt/my_repo_dir needs to be added to elasticsearch.yml on all the nodes if you are planning to use the repo type of file system. Otherwise, it will fail.
- When using remote repositories, the network bandwidth and repository storage throughput should be high enough to complete the snapshot operations normally, otherwise you will end up with partial snapshots.
Log Context
Log “Unexpected exception retrieving DEK [” + dekId + “]” class name is EncryptedRepository.java. We extracted the following from Elasticsearch source code for those seeking an in-depth context :
if (e.getCause() instanceof IOException) {
throw (IOException) e.getCause();
} else if (e.getCause() instanceof ElasticsearchException) {
throw (ElasticsearchException) e.getCause();
} else {
throw new RepositoryException(repositoryName; "Unexpected exception retrieving DEK [" + dekId + "]"; e);
}
}
} private SecretKey loadDEK(String dekId) throws IOException {
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