# Is it fine to have a 2 node cluster for Elastic Search?
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/is-it-fine-to-have-a-2-node-cluster-for-elastic-search/27585
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [August 18, 2015, 12:47pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/is-it-fine-to-have-a-2-node-cluster-for-elastic-search/27585 "2015-08-18T12:47:45Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Zeal\_Vora](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Zeal_Vora)
#### Post date: [August 18, 2015, 12:47pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/is-it-fine-to-have-a-2-node-cluster-for-elastic-search/27585/1 "2015-08-18T12:47:45Z")
Hi
One of the person said that he uses 2 node cluster for Elastic Search and he has set both the nodes to master and it does the job. Is this a feasible way of doing it ?
I've seen in Red Hat Cluster that they have 2 node cluster which works fine.
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### Author:  [@magnusbaeck](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/magnusbaeck)
#### Post date: [August 18, 2015, 1:26pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/is-it-fine-to-have-a-2-node-cluster-for-elastic-search/27585/2 "2015-08-18T13:26:42Z")
Having two master-eligible nodes _works_, but you might end up in a split brain situation which can be quite tedious to recover from. An odd number of master-eligible nodes is preferable.
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### Author:  [@polyfractal](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/polyfractal)
#### Post date: [August 18, 2015, 2:54pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/is-it-fine-to-have-a-2-node-cluster-for-elastic-search/27585/3 "2015-08-18T14:54:08Z")
Agreed. It technically works, but is not recommended at all. If I were standing up a small cluster, I would either have a single node, or jump immediately to three nodes so that you can have a useful quorum size.
A cluster of two nodes is just asking for problems in my opinion.
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### Author:  [@mosiddi](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/mosiddi)
#### Post date: [August 18, 2015, 4:53pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/is-it-fine-to-have-a-2-node-cluster-for-elastic-search/27585/4 "2015-08-18T16:53:57Z")
+1. If you really want it to be 2-nodes, make one of the nodes only master (though u will have single point of failure) and both nodes as data nodes. 😄
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### Author:  [@warkolm](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/warkolm)
#### Post date: [August 18, 2015, 10:25pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/is-it-fine-to-have-a-2-node-cluster-for-elastic-search/27585/5 "2015-08-18T22:25:48Z")
Just go with 3 nodes and be safe 🙂
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [July 5, 2017, 11:55pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/is-it-fine-to-have-a-2-node-cluster-for-elastic-search/27585/6 "2017-07-05T23:55:10Z")