# Large shard size
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/large-shard-size/288458
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [November 5, 2021, 12:14am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/large-shard-size/288458 "2021-11-05T00:14:49Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@caseydm](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/caseydm)
#### Post date: [November 5, 2021, 12:14am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/large-shard-size/288458/1 "2021-11-05T00:14:49Z")
I am setting up a new Elasticsearch cluster that will hold around 300 million records in a single index to start. The documents are academic paper data. Right now I have two nodes, so I set my shards as 2 primary and 1 replica. But at 75 million records I am already at 55gb per shard with 4 shards total. This caused a warning in Elasticsearch for 'large shard size'.
From what I have read I should resolve this. But what is the best of these options?
1. Simply create more primary shards but keep the same number of nodes (I know I would have to re-index).
2. Increase number of nodes and add replicas (could be very expensive and somewhat wasteful)
3. Split the index using publication year or something like that. This would then lead to ~300 indexes rather than the one.
I need to search across all the data for most queries. Any suggestions?
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### Author:  [@warkolm](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/warkolm)
#### Post date: [November 5, 2021, 12:17am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/large-shard-size/288458/2 "2021-11-05T00:17:57Z")
Given this is time based data, even if it's relatively static and not high velocity, I'd put things into yearly indices.
You can have more than 1 primary shard per host too 🙂
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### Author:  [@caseydm](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/caseydm)
#### Post date: [November 5, 2021, 2:49am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/large-shard-size/288458/3 "2021-11-05T02:49:59Z")
Ok great I'm giving that a shot to see how it performs. One more question - since my use case is search heavy, what do you think of the idea of having 1 primary shard and 1 replica shard to begin with, then add replicas if I decide to increase my nodes? That way I reduce the overhead of having multiple primary shards.
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### Author:  [@warkolm](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/warkolm)
#### Post date: [November 6, 2021, 4:57am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/large-shard-size/288458/4 "2021-11-06T04:57:56Z")
I guess that depends on how large the primaries end up, but it's a solid place to start.
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [December 4, 2021, 4:58am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/large-shard-size/288458/5 "2021-12-04T04:58:07Z")
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