In the docs [1], 'incomplete' is defined thusly: Ceph detects that a placement group is missing a necessary period of history from its log. If you see this state, report a bug, and try to start any failed OSDs that may contain the needed information. However, during an extensive review of list postings related to incomplete PGs, an alternate and oft-repeated definition is something like 'the number of existing replicas is less than the min_size of the pool'. In no list posting was there any acknowledgement of the definition from the docs. While trying to understand what 'incomplete' PGs are, I simply set min_size = 1 on this cluster with incomplete PGs, and they continue to be 'incomplete'. Does this mean that definition #2 is incorrect? In case #1 is correct, how can the cluster be told to forget the lapse in history? In our case, there was nothing writing to the cluster during the OSD reorganization that could have caused this lapse. [1] http://ceph.com/docs/master/rados/operations/pg-states/ John