# Increase the number of shards in the cluster
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/increase-the-number-of-shards-in-the-cluster/337916
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [July 7, 2023, 7:15pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/increase-the-number-of-shards-in-the-cluster/337916 "2023-07-07T19:15:53Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@karlanakamura](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/karlanakamura)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2023, 7:15pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/increase-the-number-of-shards-in-the-cluster/337916/1 "2023-07-07T19:15:53Z")
Hello,
I'm using version 8.6.0 of elastic cloud.
I tried to create an index but got this message:
> Validation Failed: 1: this action would add [2] shards, but this cluster currently has [2000]/[2000] maximum normal shards open;
I can't delete or merge indices that already exist. How do I increase the maximum number of shards in my cluster?
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### Author:  [@PodarcisMuralis](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/PodarcisMuralis)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2023, 9:04pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/increase-the-number-of-shards-in-the-cluster/337916/2 "2023-07-07T21:04:56Z")
Hello.
You may increase this in your elasticsearch cluster?
cluster.max\_shards\_per\_node
It is default 1000 shards per node.
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### Author:  [@rozling](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/rozling)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2023, 9:08pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/increase-the-number-of-shards-in-the-cluster/337916/3 "2023-07-07T21:08:58Z")
Be very careful with this - it's tempting to do it to make the problem go away but you may end up with even bigger problems, namely oversharding.
Here's an [explainer article](https://opster.com/guides/elasticsearch/capacity-planning/elasticsearch-oversharding/) about why oversharding is bad and what you can do to avoid it.
Howcome you can't delete / merge indices?
Do you have a lot of indices with not very much data?
You might consider reindexing some or archiving / moving / deleting data you don't need.
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### Author:  [@karlanakamura](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/karlanakamura)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2023, 12:01pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/increase-the-number-of-shards-in-the-cluster/337916/4 "2023-07-10T12:01:51Z")
Thank you for your considerations. I read this article and we are using the Attribute based approach. So we end up having many indexes with not very much data, I can't merge them because I need them to be separated by client\_id.
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### Author:  [@karlanakamura](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/karlanakamura)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2023, 12:04pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/increase-the-number-of-shards-in-the-cluster/337916/5 "2023-07-10T12:04:54Z")
Hello, thank you. How do I change this on my elasticsearch cluster?
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2023, 12:05pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/increase-the-number-of-shards-in-the-cluster/337916/6 "2023-08-07T12:05:42Z")
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