# ElasticSearch on Amazon EC2 tips **URL:** \ **Category:** Elasticsearch\ **Created:** [November 7, 2012, 6:42pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-on-amazon-ec2-tips/9605 "2012-11-07T18:42:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Karol\_Gwaj](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/karol_gwaj/32/1324_2.png) [@Karol\_Gwaj](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Karol_Gwaj)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2012, 6:42pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-on-amazon-ec2-tips/9605/1 "2012-11-07T18:42:20Z")
Hi, Im researching possibility of moving from using solr to elastic search, because to be honest it looks really cool 🙂 and i cant wait to start playing with it but before i will start i would like to get some tips/suggestions from more experienced users; the things im interested in are: 1. what instance size will be the best considering economy/power (so for example m1.xlarge instance is twice as expensive as m1.large, but will it increase proportionally performance of ES cluster (in terms of response time, and amount of concurrent requests it can process)) 2. how many shards i can run on every node (by default it is 5, how many more i can use without affecting performance) 3. is it better to have separate cluster per index or it doesn't matter (from performance point of view) 4. EBS vs ephemeral vs SSD drives (how big is the performance difference ?) 5. are ephemeral drives safe enough with replication factor lets say 3 6. how consistent is the performance of ES on EC2 (will response time spike from time to time above 2-3 sec because of some commits to the index?) statistics from my current solr instances: Number of instances: 3 (m1.xlarge) Number of documents: ~15m Requests per second: ~10 Results page size: 16 documents Average total count per query: ~100k documents queries are quite different one from another, so they are not easy to cache we are using faceting, filtering by field, custom sorting, ... Any input will be greatly appreciated Thx, -- ---
**Author:** ![otisg](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/otisg/32/492_2.png) [@otisg](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/otisg)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2012, 7:33pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-on-amazon-ec2-tips/9605/2 "2012-11-07T19:33:29Z")
Hi, One of the biggest issues with EC2 in general is availability. Instances can go down. EBS volumes are not invulnarable either. When individual instances or volumes go down you are typically fine because replication saves you. But when the whole zone has a problem, and that seems to happen at least once per year, at least in the east zone which is in North Virginia, then replication within the same zone doesn't help. Then you start thinking about having nodes in multiple zones, and with that comes extra cost. 1. depends, you'll want to test 2. depends, you'll want to test 3. you can have multiple indices per cluster, as long as you are not overwhelming it, so again it depends on the details 4. didn't test it, but I imagine the difference is big. That said, Amazon has a deal wit guaranteed IOPS and EBS and just announced a new option today, I think 5. yes, typically, but see the paragraph above 6. there is no consistency, which is why it's hard to test performance of EC2. Look up info on noisy neighbour. ## Otis Search Analytics - [Cloud Monitoring Tools & Services | Sematext](http://sematext.com/search-analytics/index.html) Performance Monitoring - [Sematext Monitoring | Infrastructure Monitoring Service](http://sematext.com/spm/index.html) On Wednesday, November 7, 2012 1:42:20 PM UTC-5, Karol Gwaj wrote: > Hi, > > Im researching possibility of moving from using solr to Elasticsearch, > because to be honest it looks really cool 🙂 and i cant wait to start > playing with it > but before i will start i would like to get some tips/suggestions from > more experienced users; the things im interested in are: > > 1. what instance size will be the best considering economy/power (so for > example m1.xlarge instance is twice as expensive as m1.large, but will it > increase proportionally performance of ES cluster (in terms of response > time, and amount of concurrent requests it can process)) > 2. how many shards i can run on every node (by default it is 5, how many > more i can use without affecting performance) > 3. is it better to have separate cluster per index or it doesn't matter > (from performance point of view) > 4. EBS vs ephemeral vs SSD drives (how big is the performance difference > ?) > 5. are ephemeral drives safe enough with replication factor lets say 3 > 6. how consistent is the performance of ES on EC2 (will response time > spike from time to time above 2-3 sec because of some commits to the index?) > > statistics from my current solr instances: > > Number of instances: 3 (m1.xlarge) > Number of documents: ~15m > Requests per second: ~10 > Results page size: 16 documents > Average total count per query: ~100k documents > > queries are quite different one from another, so they are not easy to > cache > we are using faceting, filtering by field, custom sorting, ... > > Any input will be greatly appreciated > Thx, -- ---
**Author:** ![drewr](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/drewr/32/7803_2.png) [@drewr](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/drewr)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2012, 9:36pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-on-amazon-ec2-tips/9605/3 "2012-11-07T21:36:10Z")
Karol Gwaj wrote: > 1. what instance size will be the best considering economy/power > (so for example m1.xlarge instance is twice as expensive as > m1.large, but will it increase proportionally performance of ES > cluster (in terms of response time, and amount of concurrent > requests it can process)) Totally depends on your data. Will probably have to experiment here. > 1. how many shards i can run on every node (by default it is 5, > how many more i can use without affecting performance) You can likely go way higher that single digits. You don't want a design where they can grow indefinitely, but don't be afraid of using them. Keep in mind that for a single index you don't need more than one per node. Watch some overview talks like this one to get a better idea of what these concepts mean. > **[Elasticsearch Platform — Find real-time answers at scale](https://www.elastic.co)** > > Power insights and outcomes with the Elasticsearch Platform and AI. See into your data and find answers that matter with enterprise solutions designed to help you build, observe, and protect. Try Elasticsearch free today. > 1. is it better to have separate cluster per index or it doesn't > matter (from performance point of view) Typically not. > 1. EBS vs ephemeral vs SSD drives (how big is the performance difference ?) Generally speaking, for a lot of data that can't fit in memory, SSDs will improve your disk seeks. But you really have to profile to determine if the cost is worth it. > 1. are ephemeral drives safe enough with replication factor lets say 3 "Safe enough" can only be defined by you. 🙂 It isn't terribly likely that three ec2 nodes can disappear or corrupt, but I've seen it before. Normal storage practices apply here. > 1. how consistent is the performance of ES on EC2 (will response > time spike from time to time above 2-3 sec because of some commits > to the index?) Depends on usage. Heavy indexing can affect search perf but more replicas helps. > queries are quite different one from another, so they are not easy to cache > we are using faceting, filtering by field, custom sorting, ... Faceting and sorting will typically use more memory than simple queries. Start simple and gradually add functionality & data. You'll get a feel for where limits are and whether you need to move to bigger hardware. -Drew -- ---
**Author:** ![Karol\_Gwaj](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/karol_gwaj/32/1324_2.png) [@Karol\_Gwaj](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Karol_Gwaj)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2012, 10:04am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-on-amazon-ec2-tips/9605/4 "2012-11-08T10:04:02Z")
Thx for help guys -- ---
**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, 3:05am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-on-amazon-ec2-tips/9605/5 "2017-07-06T03:05:27Z")