Magento 2 admin grid timeout – orders grid with 500k records

The admin panel timed out when trying to open the orders list. 30-second timeout. The database contained 500,000 orders accumulated over 5 years. Fix time: 3 hours.

Symptoms

• Opening Sales > Orders ends in browser timeout
• MySQL slow log: COUNT query on sales_order table takes 28 seconds
• Problem grew gradually over recent months

Solution

bin/magento sales:archive --active

# Enable order archiving in configuration
# Stores > Configuration > Sales > Sales > Orders Archiving
# Enable Archiving: Yes
# Archive Orders Purchased: 90 days ago and earlier

ALTER TABLE sales_order
    ADD INDEX idx_created_status (created_at, status),
    ADD INDEX idx_customer_email (customer_email);

ALTER TABLE sales_order_grid
    ADD INDEX idx_created_at (created_at);

OPTIMIZE TABLE sales_order_grid;

bin/magento sales:quote:cleanup
# Result: orders grid loads in 0.8s instead of timeout

Takeaways

Shops running for several years accumulate hundreds of thousands of records. Order archiving and regular OPTIMIZE TABLE are fundamental to maintaining performance. Plan archiving before you reach the critical point.