# \[self answered\]

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/self-answered/70760>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [January 6, 2017, 9:16am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/self-answered/70760 "2017-01-06T09:16:08Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![AndreCi](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/andreci/32/11653_2.png) [@AndreCi](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/AndreCi)\
**Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 9:16am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/self-answered/70760/1 "2017-01-06T09:16:08Z")

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[edit] narf, index.routing.allocation.total\_shards\_per\_node is what I was looking for, please disregard this post 🙂 (firefighting blindness)

We're seeing issues with the auto rebalancing of shards, I/O expensive shards tend to cluster on one or two nodes, moving inexpensive shards of other indices to the rest of the cluster. The result: extreme load and unresponsive services.

Is there a hidden setting to only allow x number of shards for a specific I/O intensive index? (e.g. we have 75 primary shards and 35 servers, therefore only allowing a maximum of 4 shards per node for that index would be a safeguard against the clustering-of-death)

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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:** [February 3, 2017, 9:16am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/self-answered/70760/2 "2017-02-03T09:16:28Z")

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Closed on February 3, 2017, 9:16am UTC

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