# Not enough active copies to meet write consistency of \[QUORUM\] (have 2, needed 3)

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/not-enough-active-copies-to-meet-write-consistency-of-quorum-have-2-needed-3/59980>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [September 7, 2016, 1:08pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/not-enough-active-copies-to-meet-write-consistency-of-quorum-have-2-needed-3/59980 "2016-09-07T13:08:42Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![klahnakoski](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/klahnakoski/32/3679_2.png) [@klahnakoski](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/klahnakoski)\
**Post date:** [September 7, 2016, 1:08pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/not-enough-active-copies-to-meet-write-consistency-of-quorum-have-2-needed-3/59980/1 "2016-09-07T13:08:42Z")

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I am using Elasticsearch 1.7.x, and am getting this error

```auto
ERROR: 503 RemoteTransportException[[secondary][inet[/172.31.0.203:9300]][indices:data/write/bulk[s]]]; nested: UnavailableShardsException[[pulse20160225_224749][2] Not enough active copies to meet write consistency of [QUORUM] (have 2, needed 3). Timeout: [1m], request: org.elasticsearch.action.bulk.BulkShardRequest@411a4081]; (and 29 others) while loading line id=bb.73260:7325705.2 into index "pulse20160225_224749":

```

I have 3 replicas declared for this index, and obviously not all of them are available. I am fine with there being only one copy of a shard on the cluster for extended periods. (FYI replication takes hours over a slow connection, which I am fine with).

I have tried

```auto
[ec2-user@ip-172-31-0-80 ~]$ curl -XPUT http://localhost:9200/pulse20160225_224749/_settings -d"{\"index.recovery.initial_shards\": 1}"
{"acknowledged":true}

```

and, I have tried

```auto
[ec2-user@ip-172-31-0-80 ~]$ curl -XPUT http://localhost:9200/_cluster/settings -d"{\"persistent\": {\"index.recovery.initial_shards\": 1}}"
{"acknowledged":true,"persistent":{},"transient":{}}

```

but both do nothing. What am I doing wrong?

Thanks!

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Igor\_Motov](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/igor_motov/32/45193_2.png) [@Igor\_Motov](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Igor_Motov)\
**Post date:** [September 7, 2016, 5:49pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/not-enough-active-copies-to-meet-write-consistency-of-quorum-have-2-needed-3/59980/2 "2016-09-07T17:49:14Z")

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The `index.recovery.initial_shards` setting that you were modifying is only used during cluster startup to decide if cluster saw enough copies of the shard to start recovery. I think the setting that you are looking for is ["write consistency"](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/1.7/docs-index_.html#index-consistency). By default, if you the cluster is supposed to have 3 copies of a shard, any write operation against this shard will not take place unless you have at least 2 copies of this shard available. If you don't care about the number of available copies, just set it to `one`.

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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, 10:22pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/not-enough-active-copies-to-meet-write-consistency-of-quorum-have-2-needed-3/59980/3 "2017-07-05T22:22:00Z")

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