A task is any operation you run in a cluster. For example, searching your data collection of books for a title or author name is a task. When you run OpenSearch, a task is automatically created to monitor your cluster's health and performance. For more information about all of the tasks currently executing in your cluster, you can use the `tasks` API operation.
The following request returns information about all of your tasks:
By including a task ID, you can get information specific to a particular task. Note that a task ID consists of a node's identifying string and the task's numerical ID. For example, if your node's identifying string is `nodestring` and the task's numerical ID is `1234`, then your task ID is `nodestring:1234`. You can find this information by running the `tasks` operation:
Note that if a task finishes running, it won't be returned as part of your request. For an example of a task that takes a little longer to finish, you can run the [`_reindex`]({{site.url}}{{site.baseurl}}/opensearch/reindex-data) API operation on a larger document, and then run `tasks`.
You can also use the following parameters with your query.
Parameter | Data type | Description |
:--- | :--- | :---
`nodes` | List | A comma-separated list of node IDs or names to limit the returned information. Use `_local` to return information from the node you're connecting to, specify the node name to get information from specific nodes, or keep the parameter empty to get information from all nodes.
`actions` | List | A comma-separated list of actions that should be returned. Keep empty to return all.
The `resource_stats` object is only updated for tasks that support resource tracking. These stats are computed based on scheduled thread executions, including both threads that have finished working on the task and threads currently working on the task. Because the same thread may be scheduled to work on the same task multiple times, each instance of a given thread being scheduled to work on a given task is considered to be a single thread execution.
The following table lists all response fields in the `resource_stats` object.
Response field | Description |
:--- | :--- |
`average` | The average resource usage across all scheduled thread executions. |
`total` | The sum of resource usages across all scheduled thread executions. |
`min` | The minimum resource usage across all scheduled thread executions. |
`max` | The maximum resource usage across all scheduled thread executions. |
`thread_info` | Thread-count-related stats.|
`thread_info.active_threads` | The number of threads currently working on the task. |
`thread_info.thread_executions` | The number of threads that have been scheduled to work on the task. |
The `cancel` operation supports the same parameters as the `tasks` operation. The following example shows how to cancel all cancelable tasks on multiple nodes.
```
POST _tasks/_cancel?nodes=opensearch-node1,opensearch-node2
To associate requests with tasks for better tracking, you can provide a `X-Opaque-Id:<ID_number>` header as part of the HTTPS request reader of your `curl` command. The API will attach the specified header in the returned result.
The `_tasks` operation returns the following result.
```json
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
X-Opaque-Id: 111111
content-type: application/json; charset=UTF-8
content-length: 768
{
"nodes": {
"Mgqdm0r9SEGClWxp_RbnaQ": {
"name": "opensearch-node1",
"transport_address": "172.18.0.4:9300",
"host": "172.18.0.4",
"ip": "172.18.0.4:9300",
"roles": [
"data",
"ingest",
"master",
"remote_cluster_client"
],
"tasks": {
"Mgqdm0r9SEGClWxp_RbnaQ:30072": {
"node": "Mgqdm0r9SEGClWxp_RbnaQ",
"id": 30072,
"type": "direct",
"action": "cluster:monitor/tasks/lists[n]",
"start_time_in_millis": 1613166701725,
"running_time_in_nanos": 245400,
"cancellable": false,
"parent_task_id": "Mgqdm0r9SEGClWxp_RbnaQ:30071",
"headers": {
"X-Opaque-Id": "111111"
}
},
"Mgqdm0r9SEGClWxp_RbnaQ:30071": {
"node": "Mgqdm0r9SEGClWxp_RbnaQ",
"id": 30071,
"type": "transport",
"action": "cluster:monitor/tasks/lists",
"start_time_in_millis": 1613166701725,
"running_time_in_nanos": 658200,
"cancellable": false,
"headers": {
"X-Opaque-Id": "111111"
}
}
}
}
}
}
```
This operation supports the same parameters as the `tasks` operation. The following example shows how you can associate `X-Opaque-Id` with specific tasks: