# \#of shards per index by keeping the future growth of cluster in mind?

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/of-shards-per-index-by-keeping-the-future-growth-of-cluster-in-mind/8210>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [June 24, 2012, 7:33pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/of-shards-per-index-by-keeping-the-future-growth-of-cluster-in-mind/8210 "2012-06-24T19:33:20Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Tarun\_Jangra](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/tarun_jangra/32/1426_2.png) [@Tarun\_Jangra](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Tarun_Jangra)\
**Post date:** [June 24, 2012, 7:33pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/of-shards-per-index-by-keeping-the-future-growth-of-cluster-in-mind/8210/1 "2012-06-24T19:33:20Z")

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I am looking for feedback of my conclusion. I observed number of articles  
and discussions about defining number of shards per index.

\*. By default Es is providing 5 shards and 1 replica for each index. I  
believe, There is no particular formula to define number of shards per  
index. It depends on the type of the data you are going to index in shards.  
\*. #of nodes \>= #of shards \* (#of replicas + 1) for each index.  
\*. For stats type of data. It is good to have 1 shards and 1 replica.  
Because such type of data suppose to have so many documents but smaller  
size and most probably having numbers only.

Thank you.

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**Author:** ![kimchy](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/kimchy/32/44952_2.png) [@kimchy](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/kimchy)\
**Post date:** [June 25, 2012, 11:58am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/of-shards-per-index-by-keeping-the-future-growth-of-cluster-in-mind/8210/2 "2012-06-25T11:58:06Z")

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You do want to have more shards than nodes, so you can scale out easily. As  
for stats type of data, a single shard assumption is not really relevant,  
even small documents can amount to a lot of data.

On Sun, Jun 24, 2012 at 9:33 PM, Rimpy [tarun@izap.in](mailto:tarun@izap.in) wrote:

> I am looking for feedback of my conclusion. I observed number of articles  
> and discussions about defining number of shards per index.
> 
> \*. By default Es is providing 5 shards and 1 replica for each index. I  
> believe, There is no particular formula to define number of shards per  
> index. It depends on the type of the data you are going to index in shards.  
> \*. #of nodes \>= #of shards \* (#of replicas + 1) for each index.  
> \*. For stats type of data. It is good to have 1 shards and 1 replica.  
> Because such type of data suppose to have so many documents but smaller  
> size and most probably having numbers only.
> 
> Thank you.

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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 6, 2017, 3:22am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/of-shards-per-index-by-keeping-the-future-growth-of-cluster-in-mind/8210/3 "2017-07-06T03:22:45Z")

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