# Elastic cluster capacity planning

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elastic-cluster-capacity-planning/164880>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [January 19, 2019, 6:49am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elastic-cluster-capacity-planning/164880 "2019-01-19T06:49:56Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 2

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**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:** [January 19, 2019, 9:44am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elastic-cluster-capacity-planning/164880/2 "2019-01-19T09:44:01Z")

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Indexing in Elasticsearch is very I/O intensive, so for best performance [it is recommended to use SSDs](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/6.5/tune-for-indexing-speed.html#_use_faster_hardware). If you are indexing into spinning disks it is important that you spread out the indexing load across as many disks as possible, e.g. by striping them.

It is difficult to determine exactly how much data a node can index and store, so I would recommend you perform some benchmarks if you have the hardware available. I would also recommend the following resources around sizing and best practices:

> **[Sizing Hot-Warm Architectures for Logging and Metrics in the Elasticsearch...](https://www.elastic.co/blog/sizing-hot-warm-architectures-for-logging-and-metrics-in-the-elasticsearch-service-on-elastic-cloud)**
>
> Want to learn more about the differences between the Amazon Elasticsearch Service and our official Elasticsearch Service? Visit our AWS Elasticsearch comparison page.These are exciting times! Elastics...

> **[How many shards should I have in my Elasticsearch cluster?
	  	 | Elastic](https://www.elastic.co/blog/how-many-shards-should-i-have-in-my-elasticsearch-cluster)**
>
> Elasticsearch is a very versatile platform, that supports a variety of use cases, and provides great flexibility around data organisation and replication strategies. This flexibility can however somet...

[https://www.elastic.co/webinars/optimizing-storage-efficiency-in-elasticsearch](https://www.elastic.co/webinars/optimizing-storage-efficiency-in-elasticsearch)

[https://www.elastic.co/elasticon/conf/2016/sf/quantitative-cluster-sizing](https://www.elastic.co/elasticon/conf/2016/sf/quantitative-cluster-sizing)

[https://www.elastic.co/webinars/using-rally-to-get-your-elasticsearch-cluster-size-right](https://www.elastic.co/webinars/using-rally-to-get-your-elasticsearch-cluster-size-right)

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