Diagnose a problem

There the multiple possible reasons for search performance degradation. The most common ones are:

• Memory pressure: if the working set exceeds available RAM
• Complex requests (e.g. high hnsw_ef, complex filters without payload index)
• Competing background processes (e.g. optimizer still running after bulk upload)
• Problem with the cluster (e.g. network issues, hardware degradation)

Single Query Too Slow (Latency)

Use when: individual queries take too long regardless of load.

Diagnostic steps:

• Check if second run of the same request is significantly faster (indicates memory pressure)
• Try the same query with with_payload: false and with_vectors: false to see if payload retrieval is the bottleneck
• If request uses filters, try to remove them one by one to identify if a specific filter condition is the bottleneck