# Best Source for In-Depth Understanding of Indices and Shards
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/best-source-for-in-depth-understanding-of-indices-and-shards/136792
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [June 21, 2018, 6:41am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/best-source-for-in-depth-understanding-of-indices-and-shards/136792 "2018-06-21T06:41:11Z")
**Posts on this page:** 8
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@rahulnama](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/rahulnama)
#### Post date: [June 21, 2018, 6:41am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/best-source-for-in-depth-understanding-of-indices-and-shards/136792/1 "2018-06-21T06:41:11Z")
Hello Team
I'm very interested in understanding how shards are managed in elasticsearch. I mean I want to understand from basics to everything that we should know for designing and maintaining a elasctisearch cluster in production.
As of now, I've a baisc knowledge but I want to understand more like how many shards are created for every index, how much max data each shard can allocate , how to design to improve the performance like these I have many questions?
Can you please suggest me the best resources to understand shard and index management in ES.
Also are there any books for the same. would be happy, if avaialable.
Please help
Thanks for your time as always 🙂
Rahul
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### Author:  [@A\_B](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/A_B)
#### Post date: [June 21, 2018, 8:16am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/best-source-for-in-depth-understanding-of-indices-and-shards/136792/2 "2018-06-21T08:16:13Z")
You could start here [https://www.elastic.co/blog/how-many-shards-should-i-have-in-my-elasticsearch-cluster](https://www.elastic.co/blog/how-many-shards-should-i-have-in-my-elasticsearch-cluster)
By default each index has 5 shards but you can configure that. There are recommendations to how large a shard should be and how many shards per ES node makes sense but it all depends a lot on what your data looks like and your use case.
For even more info read [Elasticsearch: The Definitive Guide](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/guide/current/inside-a-shard.html)
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### Author:  [@rahulnama](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/rahulnama)
#### Post date: [June 21, 2018, 8:30am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/best-source-for-in-depth-understanding-of-indices-and-shards/136792/3 "2018-06-21T08:30:02Z")
Hello A\_B,
Thank you.
Any books you recommend for my requirement?
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### Author:  [@A\_B](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/A_B)
#### Post date: [June 21, 2018, 8:32am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/best-source-for-in-depth-understanding-of-indices-and-shards/136792/4 "2018-06-21T08:32:12Z")
Sorry @rahulnama, I have not read any books on Elasticsearch so can't help you there. So far I have been ok with the documentation supplied by Elastic.
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### Author:  [@Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Christian_Dahlqvist)
#### Post date: [June 21, 2018, 8:33am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/best-source-for-in-depth-understanding-of-indices-and-shards/136792/5 "2018-06-21T08:33:05Z")
The answer to your questions depend a lot on the use-case and the type of hardware available, so I would recommend looking at these resources:
[https://www.elastic.co/elasticon/conf/2016/sf/quantitative-cluster-sizing](https://www.elastic.co/elasticon/conf/2016/sf/quantitative-cluster-sizing)
[https://www.elastic.co/webinars/using-rally-to-get-your-elasticsearch-cluster-size-right](https://www.elastic.co/webinars/using-rally-to-get-your-elasticsearch-cluster-size-right)
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### Author:  [@rahulnama](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/rahulnama)
#### Post date: [June 21, 2018, 8:35am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/best-source-for-in-depth-understanding-of-indices-and-shards/136792/6 "2018-06-21T08:35:42Z")
Thank you @A_B. Not a prob 🙂
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### Author:  [@rahulnama](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/rahulnama)
#### Post date: [June 21, 2018, 8:36am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/best-source-for-in-depth-understanding-of-indices-and-shards/136792/7 "2018-06-21T08:36:13Z")
Thankyou @Christian_Dahlqvist😄
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [July 19, 2018, 8:36am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/best-source-for-in-depth-understanding-of-indices-and-shards/136792/8 "2018-07-19T08:36:14Z")
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