# Number of indices / shards in a cluster
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/number-of-indices-shards-in-a-cluster/287076
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [October 19, 2021, 11:04am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/number-of-indices-shards-in-a-cluster/287076 "2021-10-19T11:04:22Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@mmoreram](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/mmoreram)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2021, 11:04am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/number-of-indices-shards-in-a-cluster/287076/1 "2021-10-19T11:04:22Z")
What is the number of indices and shards "allowed" in a cluster? How big should be a cluster to have 1000 indices, having each 1 shard and 1 replica, being each a ~2000 items index? Even a small one is recommended a 1Gb heap memory?
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### Author:  [@DavidTurner](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/DavidTurner)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2021, 11:57am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/number-of-indices-shards-in-a-cluster/287076/2 "2021-10-19T11:57:22Z")
You're technically "allowed" 1000 shards per node, so if you have 2000 shards you need at least 2 nodes, but in practice you will get much better performance out of fewer/larger indices. If you only have 2000000 docs in total then that's a tiny tiny dataset, I'd try just putting them all in a single index with one primary.
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### Author:  [@mmoreram](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/mmoreram)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2021, 12:11pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/number-of-indices-shards-in-a-cluster/287076/3 "2021-10-19T12:11:02Z")
Thanks for the response. These numbers were just something random. I have many clients, and each client works with their own index, so working in a single index is not an option (different synonyms, rules...)
Not having this limitation is great.
Thanks!
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [November 16, 2021, 12:11pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/number-of-indices-shards-in-a-cluster/287076/4 "2021-11-16T12:11:37Z")
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