# Add / Remove nodes in cluster, good practice question

**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/add-remove-nodes-in-cluster-good-practice-question/18825
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [July 23, 2014, 2:21pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/add-remove-nodes-in-cluster-good-practice-question/18825 "2014-07-23T14:21:31Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 2

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### Author: ![warkolm](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/warkolm/32/39224_2.png) [@warkolm](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/warkolm)
#### Post date: [July 23, 2014, 10:58pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/add-remove-nodes-in-cluster-good-practice-question/18825/2 "2014-07-23T22:58:17Z")

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If this is production you really want an odd number of nodes to reduce  
potential split brain issues.

However in your case, just add the new node to the cluster, let it  
replicate across, then shutdown the node you no longer want. Any impact  
will be minimal.

Regards,  
Mark Walkom

Infrastructure Engineer  
Campaign Monitor  
email: [markw@campaignmonitor.com](mailto:markw@campaignmonitor.com)  
web: [www.campaignmonitor.com](http://www.campaignmonitor.com)

On 24 July 2014 00:21, Pierre-Vincent Ledoux [pvledoux@gmail.com](mailto:pvledoux@gmail.com) wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> We have a little cluster of 2 nodes, hosting 4 indexes of about 1.5M  
> documents each, replicated on both nodes.
> 
> Those 2 nodes are on VPS that are stored on the same physical host. As it  
> represents a single point of failure, we have decided to start a new VPS on  
> a different host.
> 
> What is the correct procedure to add the new node to the cluster, get the  
> indexes replicated in it, and then removed one of the older node?
> 
> We don't use mutlicast, so I imagine that I can add the node the the  
> unicast list in the config file, but how I can be sure that it will not  
> fail all my cluster when I will restart elasticsearch?
> 
> Those nodes are online in production so it's a bit touchy for us to take  
> any risk with it.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Pv
> 
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