# Question about new shard allocation rules on new nodes

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/question-about-new-shard-allocation-rules-on-new-nodes/29509>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [September 17, 2015, 7:08pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/question-about-new-shard-allocation-rules-on-new-nodes/29509 "2015-09-17T19:08:36Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![lane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/779978/32.png) [@lane](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/lane)\
**Post date:** [September 17, 2015, 7:08pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/question-about-new-shard-allocation-rules-on-new-nodes/29509/1 "2015-09-17T19:08:36Z")

</div>

Is there an allocation setting that allows a node to participate in balancing but not allow new shards to be allocated to it? I've found that when I add a new node that it gets a disproportionate amount of new shards, overloading it. I have a number of indices that turn over hourly and daily so it would be nice to not have to set allocation rules at the index level. It would also be nice to get away from what I do now, allocating a large number of empty shards to then new node to match the shard count of the other nodes and delete them slowly over days until they're gone and the cluster is balanced.  
Any ideas or settings I've missed?

~Lane

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![msimos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/bb73d2/32.png) [@msimos](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/msimos)\
**Post date:** [September 17, 2015, 10:06pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/question-about-new-shard-allocation-rules-on-new-nodes/29509/2 "2015-09-17T22:06:28Z")

</div>

You probably can accomplish something using tags:

[https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/index-modules-allocation.html](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/index-modules-allocation.html)

If you had a tag for each machine, then you could exclude any new machine from getting any new shards. Then later on you could remove the exclude tag if you wanted to.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![lane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/779978/32.png) [@lane](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/lane)\
**Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 7:25pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/question-about-new-shard-allocation-rules-on-new-nodes/29509/3 "2015-09-22T19:25:20Z")

</div>

Thank you.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**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, 11:48pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/question-about-new-shard-allocation-rules-on-new-nodes/29509/4 "2017-07-05T23:48:45Z")

</div>