# Having read-only shard greater than 50 GB

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/having-read-only-shard-greater-than-50-gb/256061>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [November 20, 2020, 4:46am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/having-read-only-shard-greater-than-50-gb/256061 "2020-11-20T04:46:35Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![sandeepkanabar](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/sandeepkanabar/32/79399_2.png) [@sandeepkanabar](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/sandeepkanabar)\
**Post date:** [November 20, 2020, 4:46am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/having-read-only-shard-greater-than-50-gb/256061/1 "2020-11-20T04:46:35Z")

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I recently re-indexed past 18 months of day-wise indices (18 months \*30 days = 540 indices with 1 primary shard per index) into 18 monthly indices (18 indices with 12 primary shards per index).

No indexing happens on these past indices. They are effectively read-only.

The reason I arrived as 12 was based on calculations that the average of sum of day-wise-indices per month came to be around `525 GB`. So I opted for 12 indices so that each shard is less than 50 GB.

Since I relied on `average` and created a template accordingly, some monthly indices actually had data of about 700 or 800 GB. With 12 shards, per shard it comes to be `67 GB`.

My question is: Is it `okay to have read-only shards that are greater than 50 GB like 70 GB`? Or that for those months, I should increase the number of shards to `50`?

Since all these indices are read-only, I'm planning to deploy `best_compression` and `forcermerge to 1 segments` on them.

Will appreciate some inputs on this.

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**Author:** ![warkolm](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/warkolm/32/39224_2.png) [@warkolm](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/warkolm)\
**Post date:** [November 20, 2020, 4:49am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/having-read-only-shard-greater-than-50-gb/256061/2 "2020-11-20T04:49:11Z")

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Yeah, that should be ok.

If you're talking 100GB+ shards it becomes harder to manage.

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**Author:** ![sandeepkanabar](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/sandeepkanabar/32/79399_2.png) [@sandeepkanabar](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/sandeepkanabar)\
**Post date:** [November 20, 2020, 5:32am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/having-read-only-shard-greater-than-50-gb/256061/3 "2020-11-20T05:32:39Z")

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Thank you very much.

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [December 18, 2020, 5:32am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/having-read-only-shard-greater-than-50-gb/256061/4 "2020-12-18T05:32:41Z")

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Closed on December 18, 2020, 5:32am UTC

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