# Does the shard (Elasticsearch) have its own JVM settings

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/does-the-shard-elasticsearch-have-its-own-jvm-settings/147817>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [September 8, 2018, 12:47pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/does-the-shard-elasticsearch-have-its-own-jvm-settings/147817 "2018-09-08T12:47:07Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![nages](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/nages/32/46943_2.png) [@nages](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/nages)\
**Post date:** [September 8, 2018, 12:47pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/does-the-shard-elasticsearch-have-its-own-jvm-settings/147817/1 "2018-09-08T12:47:08Z")

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I am going through ES documentation and saw this following.

```auto
`Each shard is in itself a fully-functional and independent "index" that can be hosted on any node in the cluster.`

```

Does "fully functional" means it is a "seperate" lucene instance or thread that can have its own hardware and software resources associated with it?

If it is, is it possible to configure different shards to use different configurations of RAM

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**Author:** ![warkolm](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/warkolm/32/39224_2.png) [@warkolm](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/warkolm)\
**Post date:** [September 9, 2018, 8:54am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/does-the-shard-elasticsearch-have-its-own-jvm-settings/147817/2 "2018-09-09T08:54:08Z")

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A shard is a Lucene instance, yes.

> [@nages](#):
>
> If it is, is it possible to configure different shards to use different configurations of RAM

No, that's not possible.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![nages](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/nages/32/46943_2.png) [@nages](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/nages)\
**Post date:** [September 9, 2018, 6:22pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/does-the-shard-elasticsearch-have-its-own-jvm-settings/147817/3 "2018-09-09T18:22:46Z")

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Is there a specific reason not to do this ? I am trying to understand from the perspective of scalability , performance tuning ...

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**Author:** ![warkolm](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/warkolm/32/39224_2.png) [@warkolm](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/warkolm)\
**Post date:** [September 9, 2018, 9:34pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/does-the-shard-elasticsearch-have-its-own-jvm-settings/147817/4 "2018-09-09T21:34:29Z")

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Because running 100s of JVM's, ie one per shard and multiple shards per node, is far more of a waste compared to the ability to tune one single shard's JVM.

If you are having problems, then perhaps you can share details on that aspect.

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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:** [October 7, 2018, 9:34pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/does-the-shard-elasticsearch-have-its-own-jvm-settings/147817/5 "2018-10-07T21:34:32Z")

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