# Does having multiple shards of an index on a single node provide any benefits?

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/does-having-multiple-shards-of-an-index-on-a-single-node-provide-any-benefits/210237>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [December 2, 2019, 7:52pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/does-having-multiple-shards-of-an-index-on-a-single-node-provide-any-benefits/210237 "2019-12-02T19:52:09Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![iandanforth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e36b37/32.png) [@iandanforth](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/iandanforth)\
**Post date:** [December 2, 2019, 7:52pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/does-having-multiple-shards-of-an-index-on-a-single-node-provide-any-benefits/210237/1 "2019-12-02T19:52:10Z")

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I'm fairly new to ES so this may be a simple question. If I have a "cluster" of one node that has two indices on the node, is there any benefit to having `number_of_shards` greater than one?

As I understand it this will split the index across two shards, but won't provide any resiliency in the way a replica will. Is that correct?

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**Author:** ![dadoonet](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/dadoonet/32/137187_2.png) [@dadoonet](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dadoonet)\
**Post date:** [December 3, 2019, 8:15am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/does-having-multiple-shards-of-an-index-on-a-single-node-provide-any-benefits/210237/2 "2019-12-03T08:15:23Z")

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Welcome!

> [@iandanforth](#):
>
> As I understand it this will split the index across two shards, but won't provide any resiliency in the way a replica will. Is that correct?

Correct.

The number of replicas is controlled by the `number_of_replicas` setting. Defaults to `1` which means one copy of each primary.  
But if you have only one node, replicas won't be allocated.

> [@iandanforth](#):
>
> is there any benefit to having `number_of_shards` greater than one?

There is. Like if you are indexing a lot of data per second, writing in 2 parallel "index" (here shards) could help for example. Or if you have more than 20-50 gb of index size, keeping the size per shard around 20-50 gb will make sense.  
But with a "basic", "small" use case, one shard id perfectly fine.

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**Author:** ![iandanforth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e36b37/32.png) [@iandanforth](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/iandanforth)\
**Post date:** [December 3, 2019, 4:55pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/does-having-multiple-shards-of-an-index-on-a-single-node-provide-any-benefits/210237/3 "2019-12-03T16:55:07Z")

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Thank you! Very helpful.

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [December 31, 2019, 4:55pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/does-having-multiple-shards-of-an-index-on-a-single-node-provide-any-benefits/210237/4 "2019-12-31T16:55:55Z")

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