# Advice on number of shards **URL:** \ **Category:** Elasticsearch\ **Created:** [January 23, 2012, 1:50pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/advice-on-number-of-shards/6467 "2012-01-23T13:50:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Rafal\_Kuc](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/rafal_kuc/32/799_2.png) [@Rafal\_Kuc](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Rafal_Kuc)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2012, 1:50pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/advice-on-number-of-shards/6467/1 "2012-01-23T13:50:52Z")
Hello, I have a question. We will be migrating our client current Lucene index to Elasticsearch. Right now, the index contain 3 million document, with the planned growth of about 1 million a month. Those 3 million of documents is about 350GB in size divided into 4 machines. We would like to plan the Elasticsearch shard number, to be able to easily add nodes in the near future. What do you think on about having 40 shards for that amount of data ? Regards, Rafał Kuć ---
**Author:** ![kimchy](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/kimchy/32/44952_2.png) [@kimchy](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/kimchy)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2012, 7:07pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/advice-on-number-of-shards/6467/2 "2012-01-23T19:07:25Z")
40 shards sounds a bit problematic on something like 4-5 nodes, because a single search request will need to span all 40 shards (unless you use something like routing). See more info here: [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/elasticsearch/data$20flow/elasticsearch/49q-\_AgQCp8/MRol0t9asEcJ](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/elasticsearch/data$20flow/elasticsearch/49q-_AgQCp8/MRol0t9asEcJ) . On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 3:50 PM, Rafał Kuć [rafal.kuc@gmail.com](mailto:rafal.kuc@gmail.com) wrote: > Hello, > > I have a question. We will be migrating our client current Lucene > index to Elasticsearch. Right now, the index contain 3 million > document, with the planned growth of about 1 million a month. Those 3 > million of documents is about 350GB in size divided into 4 machines. > > We would like to plan the Elasticsearch shard number, to be able to > easily add nodes in the near future. What do you think on about having > 40 shards for that amount of data ? > > Regards, > Rafał Kuć ---
**Author:** ![Rafal\_Kuc](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/rafal_kuc/32/799_2.png) [@Rafal\_Kuc](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Rafal_Kuc)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2012, 8:49am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/advice-on-number-of-shards/6467/3 "2012-01-24T08:49:23Z")
Thanks for the reply Shay. Forgot to mention, that we will be using routing and the queries won't be hitting all of the shards, just the one specified by the routing. Regards Rafał On 23 Sty, 20:07, Shay Banon [kim...@gmail.com](mailto:kim...@gmail.com) wrote: > 40 shards sounds a bit problematic on something like 4-5 nodes, because a > single search request will need to span all 40 shards (unless you use > something like routing). See more info here:[Redirecting to Google Groups](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/elasticsearch/data$20flow/)... > . > > On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 3:50 PM, Rafał Kuć [rafal....@gmail.com](mailto:rafal....@gmail.com) wrote: > > > Hello, > > > I have a question. We will be migrating our client current Lucene > > index to Elasticsearch. Right now, the index contain 3 million > > document, with the planned growth of about 1 million a month. Those 3 > > million of documents is about 350GB in size divided into 4 machines. > > > We would like to plan the Elasticsearch shard number, to be able to > > easily add nodes in the near future. What do you think on about having > > 40 shards for that amount of data ? > > > Regards, > > Rafał Kuć ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2017, 3:41am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/advice-on-number-of-shards/6467/4 "2017-07-06T03:41:43Z")