# Moving nodes across allocators **URL:** \ **Category:** Elastic Cloud Enterprise (ECE)\ **Created:** [February 14, 2019, 12:16pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/moving-nodes-across-allocators/168409 "2019-02-14T12:16:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![osykora](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/osykora/32/41464_2.png) [@osykora](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/osykora)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2019, 12:16pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/moving-nodes-across-allocators/168409/1 "2019-02-14T12:16:15Z")
Hi, I've done some investigation on how to move nodes across allocators and I find it very limited in terms of options where a node can be moved to. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I have the following ECE topology: Zone A - allocator 1 Zone B - allocator 2 Zone C - allocator 3 + allocator 4 For a cluster having nodes in all 3 zones, it's possible to move ELS node only inside Zone C as this is the only one having two allocators. I can't move a node from allocator 1 to allocator 4 since the deployment specifies that nodes must be in 3 zones, and a node in Zone A can't be moved out to another zone, because it would lead to a cluster having two zones only. Does it mean that a small ECE installation with only 3 nodes and clusters having nodes in all 3 zones effectively can't use this feature at all? Actually, any ECE installation would have to have at least two allocators per zone in this case. Is that correct? ---
**Author:** ![zanbel](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/zanbel/32/20678_2.png) [@zanbel](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/zanbel)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2019, 12:55pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/moving-nodes-across-allocators/168409/2 "2019-02-14T12:55:52Z")
Hey @osykora, When thinking about HA setup in ECE it's important to consider a few scenarios: node failure, allocator failure, AZ failure, and a region (entire ECE installtion) failure. What you are describing is a scenario of an allocator failure. For users with only 3 allocators across 3 AZs an allocator failure is the same as an AZ failure. Meaning you will have to spin up a new allocator in order to regain 2 replicas across 3 AZs, and you will not be able to move nodes to another allocator in another AZ since then the 3 AZs configuration will not be achieved. If using 2 AZs with 1 replica, when 1 allocator goes down you can still move the nodes to an allocator in a different AZ, where there are no other nodes from the same clusters since in that case the 2 AZs configuration will still be achieved. Hope this helps. ---
**Author:** ![osykora](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/osykora/32/41464_2.png) [@osykora](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/osykora)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2019, 1:07pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/moving-nodes-across-allocators/168409/3 "2019-02-14T13:07:49Z")
Thanks @zanbel for the explanation. This means that ECE works as expected in the scenario I described and I understood it correctly. That's great. My only concern was that there's nothing about AZ in the documentation [https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/cloud-enterprise/current/ece-move-nodes.html](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/cloud-enterprise/current/ece-move-nodes.html) and how it affects the behavior. I thought any allocator could be used to temporarily accommodate a node after I read it, but it didn't work for me obviously 🙂 Thanks ---
**Author:** ![zanbel](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/zanbel/32/20678_2.png) [@zanbel](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/zanbel)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2019, 1:51pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/moving-nodes-across-allocators/168409/4 "2019-02-14T13:51:35Z")
That's a good point. I'll open an internal issue to make sure we better describe this use case in our documentation. Thanks for your feedback! ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2019, 1:51pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/moving-nodes-across-allocators/168409/5 "2019-02-28T13:51:41Z")
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