# Reasons for a separate monitor-cluster?

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/reasons-for-a-separate-monitor-cluster/226844>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Tags:** elastic-stack-monitoring\
**Created:** [April 7, 2020, 7:28am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/reasons-for-a-separate-monitor-cluster/226844 "2020-04-07T07:28:32Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Mattness](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/mattness/32/52975_2.png) [@Mattness](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Mattness)\
**Post date:** [April 7, 2020, 7:28am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/reasons-for-a-separate-monitor-cluster/226844/1 "2020-04-07T07:28:33Z")

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Hello,

I have to decide between setting up an extra cluster for monitoring or just let the production cluster monitor itself.

Aside from being able to see historical data if the monitored nodes are unavailable, are there any other benefits to having a production AND a monitor cluster?

best,

Mattness.

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**Author:** ![ropc](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/ropc/32/47022_2.png) [@ropc](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/ropc)\
**Post date:** [April 7, 2020, 8:15am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/reasons-for-a-separate-monitor-cluster/226844/2 "2020-04-07T08:15:57Z")

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Hi @Mattness - In production environment, we generally [recommend to use a separate monitoring cluster](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/monitoring-production.html). A couple of reasons for that:

- As you mentioned, if the monitored nodes experience any issues (outage, load, etc.), the monitoring data is still available in the separate monitoring cluster. This is extremely useful if ever you need to investigate potential issues and perform some root cause analysis (e.g. a node went down at a given time T1, your monitoring data between TO and T1 might give some clues on what happened before the node went down).
- Performance. If you were to self-monitor your cluster, this could have a performance hit (monitoring + writing data into the same cluster). It is best to let your production cluster handle the critical / business operations and just export these monitoring data to another cluster.

I hope that answers your question.

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**Author:** ![Mattness](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/mattness/32/52975_2.png) [@Mattness](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Mattness)\
**Post date:** [April 7, 2020, 8:18am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/reasons-for-a-separate-monitor-cluster/226844/3 "2020-04-07T08:18:35Z")

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Can you think of anything else in favour of a monitor cluster? 🙂

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**Author:** ![ropc](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/ropc/32/47022_2.png) [@ropc](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/ropc)\
**Post date:** [April 7, 2020, 8:26am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/reasons-for-a-separate-monitor-cluster/226844/4 "2020-04-07T08:26:16Z")

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These are the main reasons @Mattness that I can think of. From experience with our customers, self-monitoring production clusters is generally a bad idea. From troubleshooting/performance perspectives, I would strongly advise you to follow our documented recommendations 🙂

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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:** [May 5, 2020, 8:38am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/reasons-for-a-separate-monitor-cluster/226844/5 "2020-05-05T08:38:52Z")

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