# Backup of Elasticsearch **URL:** \ **Category:** Elasticsearch\ **Tags:** snapshot-and-restore\ **Created:** [May 8, 2023, 12:27pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/backup-of-elasticsearch/332816 "2023-05-08T12:27:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![raw](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6bbea6/32.png) [@raw](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/raw)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2023, 12:27pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/backup-of-elasticsearch/332816/1 "2023-05-08T12:27:02Z")
I have a cluster of 3 nodes. I have set the backup directory on the 3 nodes to be: /var/lib/elasticsearch/backups. I tried to restore the content of a snapshot I took from kibana and restore it on another cluster. It showed that the restoration was succesful but some shards are not found. Note: 1. The backup directory on the 3 nodes is not NFS, each node has its separate directory 2. The size of backup directory (/var/lib/elasticsearch/backups) is not the same accross the 3 nodes although they have the same no. of shards and same size of data I'm not sure why is this happening. When I take a snapshot from kibana it shows that the snapshot was successful. ---
**Author:** ![Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/christian_dahlqvist/32/4617_2.png) [@Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Christian_Dahlqvist)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2023, 12:31pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/backup-of-elasticsearch/332816/2 "2023-05-08T12:31:10Z")
> [@raw](#): > > The backup directory on the 3 nodes is not NFS, each node has its separate directory That is not supported. Shared storage available to all master and data nodes is required in order to take a snapshot. Please see [the docs](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/8.7/snapshots-filesystem-repository.html) for further details. ---
**Author:** ![raw](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6bbea6/32.png) [@raw](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/raw)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2023, 12:42pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/backup-of-elasticsearch/332816/3 "2023-05-08T12:42:52Z")
Do you mean it has to be NFS? ---
**Author:** ![Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/christian_dahlqvist/32/4617_2.png) [@Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Christian_Dahlqvist)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2023, 12:50pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/backup-of-elasticsearch/332816/4 "2023-05-08T12:50:17Z")
Yes, it has to be shared storage, e.g. NFS. There may be other types of shared storage that may work as well. ---
**Author:** ![raw](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6bbea6/32.png) [@raw](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/raw)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2023, 10:25am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/backup-of-elasticsearch/332816/5 "2023-05-15T10:25:19Z")
Ok. I have setup the backup directory to be managed through NFS. I took a backup from the production cluster and it didn't display any errors. I have on the production cluster 60 indices and total of 198 shards. The backup was taken to only 50 indices and 98 shards. I don't understand why did that happen. Is it because ES does not backup replicas? Also, I tried restoring the backup on a testing cluster and most of the indices had a red health state + some other indices don't have data in them. Note: the size of the directory of /var/lib/elasticsearch is 22GB on each node. The size of the backup directory after single snapshot is 31GB I don't know what am I doing wrong. Do I need to disable shard allocation before backing up? ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2023, 10:27am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/backup-of-elasticsearch/332816/7 "2023-06-12T10:27:09Z")
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