# How many nodes/shards do I need for a cluster Elasticsearch? **URL:** \ **Category:** Elasticsearch\ **Created:** [July 31, 2015, 8:28am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-many-nodes-shards-do-i-need-for-a-cluster-elasticsearch/26623 "2015-07-31T08:28:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Juan\_Diaz\_Gonzalez](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ea5d25/32.png) [@Juan\_Diaz\_Gonzalez](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Juan_Diaz_Gonzalez)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2015, 8:28am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-many-nodes-shards-do-i-need-for-a-cluster-elasticsearch/26623/1 "2015-07-31T08:28:22Z")
I was reading about the number of nodes necesaries in Elasticsearch cluster do yo need and the recomendation is that to have one node per shard. For in this way the queries could be executed in parallel over all the nodes, acording to this link > **[How many shards should Elasticsearch indexes have?](https://cpratt.co/how-many-shards-should-elasticsearch-indexes-have/)** > > One of the best features of Elasticsearch is that it comes with support for clustering built in. However, because of this, when you set up an index, you're faced with an often intimidating question: just how many shards/replicas should my index have?... But my question is, if I have for example a logstash server running every days I have a new index so in this way could have the same number of nodes althoug the number of indexes is increasing so in this way I will have more shards per node. So my question is if the important thing is that it will be a shard per node and in the same node it could be shards but from others indices. Nowadays I have this configuration for the indices and I will have an index more per day: health status index pri rep docs.count docs.deleted store.size pri.store.size green open logstash-2015.07.23 5 1 6 0 86.5kb 43.2kb green open logstash-2015.07.22 5 1 4 0 56.4kb 28.2kb green open logstash-2015.07.24 5 1 1 0 16.1kb 8kb green open .marvel-kibana 5 1 1 1 10.4kb 5.2kb green open logstash-2015.07.13 5 1 3 0 44.6kb 22.3kb green open logstash-2015.07.20 5 1 2 0 29.6kb 14.8kb green open logstash-2015.07.14 5 1 23 0 208.4kb 104.2kb green open logstash-2015.07.21 5 1 15 0 190.5kb 95.2kb green open logstash-2015.07.27 5 1 8 0 114.9kb 57.4kb green open logstash-2015.07.17 5 1 6 0 87.9kb 43.9kb green open company 5 1 221613 4 40.1mb 20mb green open logstash-2015.07.15 5 1 3 0 44.5kb 22.2kb green open logstash-2015.07.16 5 1 6 0 86.4kb 43.2kb green open company\_history 5 1 124 0 103.7kb 49.5kb green open logstash-2015.07.28 5 1 2 0 29.6kb 14.8kb green open .kibana 5 1 1 0 9.1kb 4.5kb And with this nodes: shards disk.used disk.avail disk.total disk.percent host ip node 39 3.2gb 16.8gb 20gb 16 bc10-05 10.8.5.15 Anomaloco 39 6.4gb 80.8gb 87.3gb 7 bc10-03 10.8.5.13 Algrim the Strong 0 0b l8a 10.8.0.231 logstash-l8a-5920-4018 38 6.4gb 80.8gb 87.3gb 7 bc10-03 10.8.5.13 Harry Leland 38 3.2gb 16.8gb 20gb 16 bc10-05 10.8.5.15 Pathway 38 3.2gb 16.8gb 20gb 16 bc10-05 10.8.5.15 Hypnotia ---
**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:** [July 31, 2015, 8:31am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-many-nodes-shards-do-i-need-for-a-cluster-elasticsearch/26623/2 "2015-07-31T08:31:19Z")
What you have is fine. Having one shard per index on each node is ideal, but not necessary. You just need to keep an eye on things and remove data/add nodes/add heap as resources get to capacity. ---
**Author:** ![Juan\_Diaz\_Gonzalez](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ea5d25/32.png) [@Juan\_Diaz\_Gonzalez](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Juan_Diaz_Gonzalez)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2015, 8:40am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-many-nodes-shards-do-i-need-for-a-cluster-elasticsearch/26623/3 "2015-07-31T08:40:14Z")
Ok, and other question if for example I add a new node I have unasigned shards although in the elasticsearch configuration (elasticsearch.yml) I have this wrote paremeter: ``` index.routing.allocation.disable_allocation: false ``` After this I executed a script to recollate all shards: ``` NODE="Anomaloco" IFS=$'\n' for line in $(curl -s 'localhost:9200/_cat/shards' | fgrep UNASSIGNED); do INDEX=$(echo $line | (awk '{print $1}')) SHARD=$(echo $line | (awk '{print $2}')) curl -XPOST 'localhost:9200/_cluster/reroute' -d '{ "commands": [ { "allocate": { "index": "'$INDEX'", "shard": '$SHARD', "node": "'$NODE'", "allow_primary": true } } ] }' done ``` So in this way I have all shards recollated. And my question is if this could give me problems in a future because I want to have a structure of parent/child and the parent and the child they need to be in the same shard to the routing by parent or child works correctly. Thanks for your quick request. ---
**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:** [July 31, 2015, 9:02am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-many-nodes-shards-do-i-need-for-a-cluster-elasticsearch/26623/4 "2015-07-31T09:02:06Z")
Why would you do this! Let ES handle things, otherwise you are just asking for trouble. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2017, 11:58pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-many-nodes-shards-do-i-need-for-a-cluster-elasticsearch/26623/5 "2017-07-05T23:58:01Z")