Elasticsearch cluster version

Elastic Stack Elasticsearch
1

Hello

I have Elasticsearch cluster with multiple nodes. I am planning on removing one node from the cluster and adding new node on a different server. My questions are as follows:

  1. All cluster nodes are running on 8.10.0 version, does the new node need to be with same version or can I use version 8.15.1?
  2. Is it possible to just shut down old node and copy it's data directory to new node and start new node, or do I need to first move all the shards to other nodes, shut down old server and then start new server and add it to cluster?

Thank you in advance!

2

All the nodes in a cluster must be in the same version.

You need to first move the shards to other nodes and then when the current node is empty you can remove it, shutting down and moving the data directory is not officially supported nor recommended.

The documentation on how to exclude a cluster from allocation can be found here.