# Indexing while relocating shards / reballance

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/indexing-while-relocating-shards-reballance/36658>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [December 8, 2015, 5:00pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/indexing-while-relocating-shards-reballance/36658 "2015-12-08T17:00:04Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Bruno\_Lavoie](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/bruno_lavoie/32/8408_2.png) [@Bruno\_Lavoie](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Bruno_Lavoie)\
**Post date:** [December 8, 2015, 5:00pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/indexing-while-relocating-shards-reballance/36658/1 "2015-12-08T17:00:04Z")

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Hello,

Basic question: is Elasticsearch able to index while there is some relocating / reballance operation?

We have a write heavy cluster for a central log service, using logstash from many sources. As you probably know, there is an index for each day. Maybe it's ok to reballance the cluster for shards older than one day, but I saw this happening for the current indexing day.

If reballance operation makes indexing trouble, how to disable shard balancing for the current day indexes?

Thanks in advance  
Bruno Lavoie

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**Author:** ![magnusbaeck](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/magnusbaeck/32/44943_2.png) [@magnusbaeck](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/magnusbaeck)\
**Post date:** [December 8, 2015, 6:14pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/indexing-while-relocating-shards-reballance/36658/2 "2015-12-08T18:14:15Z")

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ES will continue to serve queries and index new data even if shards are being moved around.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Bruno\_Lavoie](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/bruno_lavoie/32/8408_2.png) [@Bruno\_Lavoie](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Bruno_Lavoie)\
**Post date:** [December 8, 2015, 10:59pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/indexing-while-relocating-shards-reballance/36658/3 "2015-12-08T22:59:21Z")

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Thanks

Even if it is a primary shard?

Bruno

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**Author:** ![nik9000](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/nik9000/32/44947_2.png) [@nik9000](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/nik9000)\
**Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 1:01am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/indexing-while-relocating-shards-reballance/36658/4 "2015-12-09T01:01:35Z")

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Relocation is always done from the primary. Actions are replayed on the  
target.

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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:** [July 5, 2017, 11:32pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/indexing-while-relocating-shards-reballance/36658/5 "2017-07-05T23:32:27Z")

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