# Best strategy to join two clusters **URL:** \ **Category:** Elasticsearch\ **Tags:** docker\ **Created:** [November 10, 2023, 4:04pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/best-strategy-to-join-two-clusters/346883 "2023-11-10T16:04:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ElasticLiver](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/elasticliver/32/64869_2.png) [@ElasticLiver](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/ElasticLiver)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2023, 4:04pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/best-strategy-to-join-two-clusters/346883/1 "2023-11-10T16:04:08Z")
Hi, A customer hand me two clusters, these are in two servers, on each server there are 3 nodes on dockers, what will the best strategy to join these two clusters? Also I was thinking that would be better to get rid of docker, it is posible to mantain the data and use the only one instance of elastic on the server? I imagine that i have to move all shards to one docker node, but It will be any inconvinience? Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![sholzhauer](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/sholzhauer/32/110282_2.png) [@sholzhauer](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/sholzhauer)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2023, 10:54pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/best-strategy-to-join-two-clusters/346883/2 "2023-11-10T22:54:36Z")
I feel like cross cluster search and cross cluster replication could help you with moving the data and phasing out one cluster. ---
**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:** [November 11, 2023, 7:05am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/best-strategy-to-join-two-clusters/346883/3 "2023-11-11T07:05:36Z")
There is no way to join two clusters in Elasticsearch, and a node that has been a part of one cluster can not be made to join another while retaining data and cluster state. It has to join the new cluter as a new, completely empty node. You will therefore need to [take a snaphot of the data in cluster B and then restore this to cluster A](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/8.11/modules-snapshots.html). You can then clear the nodes in cluster B and configure them to join cluster A as new, fresh nodes. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2023, 7:06am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/best-strategy-to-join-two-clusters/346883/4 "2023-12-09T07:06:27Z")
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