k-NN plugin API

The k-NN plugin adds several APIs for managing, monitoring and optimizing your k-NN workload.

Stats

Introduced 1.0

The k-NN stats API provides information about the current status of the k-NN plugin. The plugin keeps track of both cluster-level and node-level statistics. Cluster-level statistics have a single value for the entire cluster. Node-level statistics have a single value for each node in the cluster. You can filter the query by nodeId and statName:

GET /_plugins/_knn/nodeId1,nodeId2/stats/statName1,statName2

Note: Some stats contain graph in the name. In these cases, graph is synonymous with native library index. The term graph is a legacy detail, coming from when the plugin only supported the HNSW algorithm, which consists of hierarchical graphs.

Usage

GET /_plugins/_knn/stats?pretty
{
    "_nodes" : {
        "total" : 1,
        "successful" : 1,
        "failed" : 0
    },
    "cluster_name" : "my-cluster",
    "circuit_breaker_triggered" : false,
    "model_index_status" : "YELLOW",
    "nodes" : {
      "JdfxIkOS1-43UxqNz98nw" : {
        "graph_memory_usage_percentage" : 3.68,
        "graph_query_requests" : 1420920,
        "graph_memory_usage" : 2,
        "cache_capacity_reached" : false,
        "load_success_count" : 179,
        "training_memory_usage" : 0,
        "indices_in_cache" : {
            "myindex" : {
                "graph_memory_usage" : 2,
                "graph_memory_usage_percentage" : 3.68,
                "graph_count" : 2
            }
        },
        "script_query_errors" : 0,
        "hit_count" : 1420775,
        "knn_query_requests" : 147092,
        "total_load_time" : 2436679306,
        "miss_count" : 179,
        "training_memory_usage_percentage" : 0.0,
        "graph_index_requests" : 656,
        "faiss_initialized" : true,
        "load_exception_count" : 0,
        "training_errors" : 0,
        "eviction_count" : 0,
        "nmslib_initialized" : false,
        "script_compilations" : 0,
        "script_query_requests" : 0,
        "graph_query_errors" : 0,
        "indexing_from_model_degraded" : false,
        "graph_index_errors" : 0,
        "training_requests" : 17,
        "script_compilation_errors" : 0
    }
  }
}

GET /_plugins/_knn/HYMrXXsBSamUkcAjhjeN0w/stats/circuit_breaker_triggered,graph_memory_usage?pretty
{
    "_nodes" : {
        "total" : 1,
        "successful" : 1,
        "failed" : 0
    },
    "cluster_name" : "my-cluster",
    "circuit_breaker_triggered" : false,
    "nodes" : {
        "HYMrXXsBSamUkcAjhjeN0w" : {
            "graph_memory_usage" : 1
        }
    }
}

Warmup operation

Introduced 1.0

The native library indexes used to perform approximate k-Nearest Neighbor (k-NN) search are stored as special files with other Apache Lucene segment files. In order for you to perform a search on these indexes using the k-NN plugin, the plugin needs to load these files into native memory.

If the plugin hasn’t loaded the files into native memory, it loads them when it receives a search request. The loading time can cause high latency during initial queries. To avoid this situation, users often run random queries during a warmup period. After this warmup period, the files are loaded into native memory and their production workloads can begin. This loading process is indirect and requires extra effort.

As an alternative, you can avoid this latency issue by running the k-NN plugin warmup API operation on whatever indexes you’re interested in searching. This operation loads all the native library files for all of the shards (primaries and replicas) of all the indexes specified in the request into native memory.

After the process finishes, you can start searching against the indexes with no initial latency penalties. The warmup API operation is idempotent, so if a segment’s native library files are already loaded into memory, this operation has no impact. It only loads files that aren’t currently in memory.

Usage

This request performs a warmup on three indexes:

GET /_plugins/_knn/warmup/index1,index2,index3?pretty
{
  "_shards" : {
    "total" : 6,
    "successful" : 6,
    "failed" : 0
  }
}

total indicates how many shards the k-NN plugin attempted to warm up. The response also includes the number of shards the plugin succeeded and failed to warm up.

The call doesn’t return results until the warmup operation finishes or the request times out. If the request times out, the operation still continues on the cluster. To monitor the warmup operation, use the OpenSearch _tasks API:

GET /_tasks

After the operation has finished, use the k-NN _stats API operation to see what the k-NN plugin loaded into the graph.

Best practices

For the warmup operation to function properly, follow these best practices:

• Don’t run merge operations on indexes that you want to warm up. During merge, the k-NN plugin creates new segments, and old segments are sometimes deleted. For example, you could encounter a situation in which the warmup API operation loads native library indexes A and B into native memory, but segment C is created from segments A and B being merged. The native library indexes for A and B would no longer be in memory, and native library index C would also not be in memory. In this case, the initial penalty for loading native library index C is still present.

• Confirm that all native library indexes you want to warm up can fit into native memory. For more information about the native memory limit, see the knn.memory.circuit_breaker.limit statistic. High graph memory usage causes cache thrashing, which can lead to operations constantly failing and attempting to run again.

• Don’t index any documents that you want to load into the cache. Writing new information to segments prevents the warmup API operation from loading the native library indexes until they’re searchable. This means that you would have to run the warmup operation again after indexing finishes.

Get Model

Introduced 1.2

Used to retrieve information about models present in the cluster. Some native library index configurations require a training step before indexing and querying can begin. The output of training is a model that can then be used to initialize native library index files during indexing. The model is serialized in the k-NN model system index.

GET /_plugins/_knn/models/{model_id}

Usage

GET /_plugins/_knn/models/test-model?pretty
{
  "model_id" : "test-model",
  "model_blob" : "SXdGbIAAAAAAAAAAAA...",
  "state" : "created",
  "timestamp" : "2021-11-15T18:45:07.505369036Z",
  "description" : "Default",
  "error" : "",
  "space_type" : "l2",
  "dimension" : 128,
  "engine" : "faiss" 
}

GET /_plugins/_knn/models/test-model?pretty&filter_path=model_id,state
{
  "model_id" : "test-model",
  "state" : "created"
}

Search Model

Introduced 1.2

Use an OpenSearch query to search for models in the index.

Usage

GET/POST /_plugins/_knn/models/_search?pretty&_source_excludes=model_blob
{
    "query": {
         ...
     }
}

{
    "took" : 0,
    "timed_out" : false,
    "_shards" : {
        "total" : 1,
        "successful" : 1,
        "skipped" : 0,
        "failed" : 0
    },
    "hits" : {
      "total" : {
          "value" : 1,
          "relation" : "eq"
      },
    "max_score" : 1.0,
    "hits" : [
      {
        "_index" : ".opensearch-knn-models",
        "_id" : "test-model",
        "_score" : 1.0,
        "_source" : {
          "engine" : "faiss",
          "space_type" : "l2",
          "description" : "Default",
          "model_id" : "test-model",
          "state" : "created",
          "error" : "",
          "dimension" : 128,
          "timestamp" : "2021-11-15T18:45:07.505369036Z"
        }
      }
    ]
  }
}

Delete Model

Introduced 1.2

Used to delete a particular model in the cluster.

Usage

DELETE /_plugins/_knn/models/{model_id}
{
  "model_id": {model_id},
  "acknowledged": true
}

Train Model

Introduced 1.2

Create and train a model that can be used for initializing k-NN native library indexes during indexing. This API will pull training data from a knn_vector field in a training index and then create and train a model and then serialize it to the model system index. Training data must match the dimension passed into the body of the request. This request will return when training begins. To monitor the state of the model, use the Get model API.

Usage

POST /_plugins/_knn/models/{model_id}/_train?preference={node_id}
{
    "training_index": "train-index-name",
    "training_field": "train-field-name",
    "dimension": 16,
    "max_training_vector_count": 1200,
    "search_size": 100,
    "description": "My model",
    "method": {
        "name":"ivf",
        "engine":"faiss",
        "space_type": "l2",
        "parameters":{
            "nlist":128,
            "encoder":{
                "name":"pq",
                "parameters":{
                    "code_size":8
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

{
    "model_id": "model_x"
}

POST /_plugins/_knn/models/_train?preference={node_id}
{
    "training_index": "train-index-name",
    "training_field": "train-field-name",
    "dimension": 16,
    "max_training_vector_count": 1200,
    "search_size": 100,
    "description": "My model",
    "method": {
        "name":"ivf",
        "engine":"faiss",
        "space_type": "l2",
        "parameters":{
            "nlist":128,
            "encoder":{
                "name":"pq",
                "parameters":{
                    "code_size":8
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

{
    "model_id": "dcdwscddscsad"
}