# Elasticsearch - question about shards

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-question-about-shards/133694>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [May 29, 2018, 2:18pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-question-about-shards/133694 "2018-05-29T14:18:39Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Rohlik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/aeb1de/32.png) [@Rohlik](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Rohlik)\
**Post date:** [May 29, 2018, 2:18pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-question-about-shards/133694/1 "2018-05-29T14:18:39Z")

</div>

Hi there!

We have 2 ES instances in our environment with 2 daily index and we already have more than 7k shards.  
It is normal?  
If not, what are you suggest?

```
/_cat/health?v
epoch timestamp cluster status node.total node.data shards pri relo init unassign pending_tasks max_task_wait_time active_shards_percent
1527602653 16:04:13 logs green 2 2 7760 3880 0 0 0 0 - 100.0%
```

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<div class="post-metadata">

**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:** [May 29, 2018, 2:59pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-question-about-shards/133694/2 "2018-05-29T14:59:04Z")

</div>

You probably have too many shards per node.

May I suggest you look at the following resources about sizing:

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

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Rohlik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/aeb1de/32.png) [@Rohlik](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Rohlik)\
**Post date:** [May 30, 2018, 9:04am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-question-about-shards/133694/3 "2018-05-30T09:04:23Z")

</div>

Thank you for your links.  
I figured out that our shards size is very small:

```
GET _cat/shards/logs-2018.05.29
logs-2018.05.29 1 r STARTED 196755 176.9mb 192.168.2.161 db1
logs-2018.05.29 1 p STARTED 196755 176.7mb 192.168.2.162 db2
logs-2018.05.29 3 r STARTED 197144 176.9mb 192.168.2.161 db1
logs-2018.05.29 3 p STARTED 197144 176.6mb 192.168.2.162 db2
logs-2018.05.29 4 p STARTED 196554 176.2mb 192.168.2.161 db1
logs-2018.05.29 4 r STARTED 196554 177.4mb 192.168.2.162 db2
logs-2018.05.29 2 p STARTED 196979 177.8mb 192.168.2.161 db1
logs-2018.05.29 2 r STARTED 196979 176.7mb 192.168.2.162 db2
logs-2018.05.29 0 p STARTED 196328 176.1mb 192.168.2.161 db1
logs-2018.05.29 0 r STARTED 196328 176.5mb 192.168.2.162 db2

```

As I understand, it is common to have shard size around 30GB. Currently I have `number_of_shards` set to `5` and this is probably my problem. I will set this parameter to 2.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**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:** [May 30, 2018, 9:57am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-question-about-shards/133694/4 "2018-05-30T09:57:27Z")

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Even better, set it to `1` 🙂

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [June 27, 2018, 9:57am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-question-about-shards/133694/5 "2018-06-27T09:57:28Z")

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