# Replica path
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/replica-path/7930
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [May 31, 2012, 2:20pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/replica-path/7930 "2012-05-31T14:20:54Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@dkoum](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dkoum)
#### Post date: [May 31, 2012, 2:20pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/replica-path/7930/1 "2012-05-31T14:20:54Z")
Hi,
I have elasticsearch set up on one ec2 vm with ebs storage, with 5
shards and 0 replicas.
I am trying to increase index availability beyond the ebs levels
without using more servers.
My first thought was to set replicas=1,attach a second ebs drive to my
server and configure elasticsearch to store the replicas in the second
drive. Unfortunately I cannot find any config option doing that. I
guess this is not how es replication works. Or am I missing something?
This leaves me with the option to introduce downtime to the service so
that I can shut down ES to flush data to disk, copy index to s3 and
start again.
Any other options?
thx in advance,
Dionysis
---
### Author:  [@kimchy](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/kimchy)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2012, 9:26am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/replica-path/7930/2 "2012-06-03T09:26:28Z")
Why do you need to shutdown the node in order to do backups? Simply backup
EBS to s3, if you can, send a disable flush to the translog using the index
update settings API before the backup, and then enable it.
On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 4:20 PM, dkoum [kumdio@gmail.com](mailto:kumdio@gmail.com) wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have elasticsearch set up on one ec2 vm with ebs storage, with 5
> shards and 0 replicas.
>
> I am trying to increase index availability beyond the ebs levels
> without using more servers.
>
> My first thought was to set replicas=1,attach a second ebs drive to my
> server and configure elasticsearch to store the replicas in the second
> drive. Unfortunately I cannot find any config option doing that. I
> guess this is not how es replication works. Or am I missing something?
>
> This leaves me with the option to introduce downtime to the service so
> that I can shut down ES to flush data to disk, copy index to s3 and
> start again.
>
> Any other options?
>
> thx in advance,
> Dionysis
---
### Author:  [@dkoum](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dkoum)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2012, 3:33pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/replica-path/7930/3 "2012-06-03T15:33:11Z")
thanks for answering.
I had totally missed the disable-flush functionality, I'm checking it right
now.
I just wanted to make sure I don't backup an inconsistent index due to an
ongoing index merge or other index operations.
On Sun, Jun 3, 2012 at 12:26 PM, Shay Banon [kimchy@gmail.com](mailto:kimchy@gmail.com) wrote:
> Why do you need to shutdown the node in order to do backups? Simply backup
> EBS to s3, if you can, send a disable flush to the translog using the index
> update settings API before the backup, and then enable it.
>
> On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 4:20 PM, dkoum [kumdio@gmail.com](mailto:kumdio@gmail.com) wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > I have elasticsearch set up on one ec2 vm with ebs storage, with 5
> > shards and 0 replicas.
> >
> > I am trying to increase index availability beyond the ebs levels
> > without using more servers.
> >
> > My first thought was to set replicas=1,attach a second ebs drive to my
> > server and configure elasticsearch to store the replicas in the second
> > drive. Unfortunately I cannot find any config option doing that. I
> > guess this is not how es replication works. Or am I missing something?
> >
> > This leaves me with the option to introduce downtime to the service so
> > that I can shut down ES to flush data to disk, copy index to s3 and
> > start again.
> >
> > Any other options?
> >
> > thx in advance,
> > Dionysis
---
### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2017, 3:25am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/replica-path/7930/4 "2017-07-06T03:25:48Z")