# Configuration of a very small cluster **URL:** \ **Category:** Elasticsearch\ **Created:** [July 31, 2012, 6:22pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/configuration-of-a-very-small-cluster/8585 "2012-07-31T18:22:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Jiri\_Pospisil](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/jiri_pospisil/32/2793_2.png) [@Jiri\_Pospisil](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Jiri_Pospisil)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2012, 6:22pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/configuration-of-a-very-small-cluster/8585/1 "2012-07-31T18:22:55Z")
Hello, I'm about to build a very small cluster and since I'm new to elasticsearch, I would like to hear your opinion on my current design and thought process. Basically I need to store and search log files. The logs should be stored for six months. At the beginning, there will be only one machine (only parameters I know are 4GB of ram and 4 cores), additional machine might come in the near future. There will be around 200m documents every month (~170GB). Given this setup, I thought of this: 1. Make one index for every week - i.e. logs\_2012\_31, logs\_2012\_32... This will allow me to query just logs\_2012\_\* (or create an alias?) or only a small number of indices when given a time range. This should also help when calling optimize. 2. Every index will have 2 shards (so that I don't need to reindex when adding the other machine), no replicas and set refresh\_interval to -1. 3. \_source should be compressed. Does that sound reasonable? And can the HW actually handle this load? Thank you! ---
**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, 3:18am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/configuration-of-a-very-small-cluster/8585/2 "2017-07-06T03:18:16Z")