Clarification please on activities for single role nodes in a cluster

Elastic Stack Elasticsearch
1

Hi all,

I've read a few posts on the benefits of having dedicated master nodes, client nodes, and data nodes, as opposed to a cluster where all nodes server all roles. I am preparing to roll this out to my cluster, but had a question about what types of activities/requests should go to which types of nodes. I will have 3 master only nodes, 4 client nodes, 6 data nodes.

For client only nodes, search requests (Kibana, REST, etc) go here. That's somewhat obvious. What about indexing requests (bulk or otherwise)? Do they go to client nodes as well?

For master only nodes, what should I direct to them?
Same for data only nodes? Maybe NOTHING goes directly to data only nodes?

Sorry if this is spelled out somewhere that I missed. :smile:
Many thanks.
Chris

2

Its probably a good idea to leave the master nodes alone and direct all your searches and index requests through the client nodes. Since you have 4 of them, this shouldn't be an issue. That being said it's probably a good idea to keep an eye on the utilization of your client nodes. If they are close to the wall you might want to direct some requests at your master nodes instead.

3

Thanks for the quick reply!

So it sounds like ideally all interaction with the cluster would happen through the client nodes only then? I can make that happen.

Thanks again for the help.
Chris