# Gateway and Index Store **URL:** \ **Category:** Elasticsearch\ **Created:** [August 17, 2011, 8:43pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/gateway-and-index-store/5187 "2011-08-17T20:43:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![optimusprime](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/f14d63/32.png) [@optimusprime](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/optimusprime)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2011, 8:43pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/gateway-and-index-store/5187/1 "2011-08-17T20:43:21Z")
I'm not really sure what the difference between the two is. Is the index store just a caching layer in front of the gateway? Or does the gateway store only meta-data, and the actual data (JSON) is stored in the index store? I also read somewhere that when using local gateway, we need to use a file system store (and not a memory store). Will that mean that all search operations will read directly from disk? ---
**Author:** ![kimchy](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/kimchy/32/44952_2.png) [@kimchy](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/kimchy)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2011, 12:43pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/gateway-and-index-store/5187/2 "2011-08-18T12:43:44Z")
Think of the gateway module as a way to support full restart recoverability. The local gateway uses the "index store" + additional metadata (stored next to the index store) in order to recover from a full cluster restart. For that, you need the index store to be persistent across restarts (file system). The shared gateway persists the index to a shared storage location, which all nodes "see". As for file system, yes, a search will go to the file system, but, its structured in a way that file system access is optimized (by lucene). On Wed, Aug 17, 2011 at 11:43 PM, optimusprime [usmasood@gmail.com](mailto:usmasood@gmail.com) wrote: > I'm not really sure what the difference between the two is. Is the > index store just a caching layer in front of the gateway? Or does the > gateway store only meta-data, and the actual data (JSON) is stored in > the index store? I also read somewhere that when using local gateway, > we need to use a file system store (and not a memory store). Will that > mean that all search operations will read directly from disk? ---
**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, 3:56am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/gateway-and-index-store/5187/3 "2017-07-06T03:56:41Z")