[euphemize]

I used to try and reason with ES settings on production, for about a year or two. Something would invariably break, unless you spend time with it every day, checking configurations and monitoring performance.

We use the AWS ElasticSearch service, and while it does not provide the same flexibility, it's been fantastic for us. No configuration files, no weird restart behaviour, no thread pool madness - it just runs. You can upgrade your instance sizes seamlessly and it integrates well with other AWS parts (ex: cloudwatch).