# Segments\_per\_tier policy not enforced?
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/segments-per-tier-policy-not-enforced/10347
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [January 15, 2013, 8:57am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/segments-per-tier-policy-not-enforced/10347 "2013-01-15T08:57:57Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Cedric\_Hourcade](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Cedric_Hourcade)
#### Post date: [January 15, 2013, 8:57am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/segments-per-tier-policy-not-enforced/10347/1 "2013-01-15T08:57:57Z")
Hello,
I am struggling to keep my number of segments per shard low without having
to perform some forced \_optimize. I thought setting "segments\_per\_tier" and
"max\_merge\_at\_once" with a low value would limit the number of segments,
but no matter what I set my shards always end up with about 15/20 segments.
I indexed a few millions of documents on a single node, merges happened,
but in the end there are still about 18 segments per shard, even with
segments\_per\_tier set at 2. And the log shows that no merges have been
performed since yesterday.
Am I missing something ? There are my settings, my segments layout and a
piece of the merge log: [https://gist.github.com/4537335](https://gist.github.com/4537335)
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2017, 2:56am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/segments-per-tier-policy-not-enforced/10347/2 "2017-07-06T02:56:24Z")