# Setting default number of replicas for new indexes
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/setting-default-number-of-replicas-for-new-indexes/47782
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [April 19, 2016, 11:40am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/setting-default-number-of-replicas-for-new-indexes/47782 "2016-04-19T11:40:33Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@dandrestor](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dandrestor)
#### Post date: [April 19, 2016, 11:40am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/setting-default-number-of-replicas-for-new-indexes/47782/1 "2016-04-19T11:40:34Z")
Hello,
I'm running a small test installation and I would like to disable replicas. I was able to set the number of replicas to 0 for all existing indexes/shards, using /\_settings, but newly created indexes have the old default value of 1. How can I change this value for new indexes also?
Many thanks,
Dan
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### Author:  [@magnusbaeck](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/magnusbaeck)
#### Post date: [April 19, 2016, 11:41am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/setting-default-number-of-replicas-for-new-indexes/47782/2 "2016-04-19T11:41:39Z")
Is there an index template with a replica setting of one that applies to the indexes you create?
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### Author:  [@dandrestor](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dandrestor)
#### Post date: [April 19, 2016, 11:50am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/setting-default-number-of-replicas-for-new-indexes/47782/3 "2016-04-19T11:50:02Z")
Not unless one is created by default on installation.
Update: I checked, as far as I can tell the answer is no. There is a template that applies to the indexes being created (we're talking about logstash here), but it doesn't include a replica setting.
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### Author:  [@thn](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/thn)
#### Post date: [April 19, 2016, 12:26pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/setting-default-number-of-replicas-for-new-indexes/47782/4 "2016-04-19T12:26:07Z")
For your own testing environment, if you prefer to have 0 replicas for all indices then set it in the elasticsearch.yml file and restart ES. You can also set the number of shards in this file too.
For other cases, I suggest to create a template for each index so you can control both the number of shards and replicas before creating a new index. In the template, you can also set the alias so that all related time series indices can have the same prefix and are also a part of an alias. Just load the template once.
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### Author:  [@dandrestor](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dandrestor)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2016, 7:27am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/setting-default-number-of-replicas-for-new-indexes/47782/5 "2016-04-21T07:27:02Z")
> [@thn](#):
>
> set it in the elasticsearch.yml file and restart ES
Thanks, this worked.
For completeness' sake, I was able to change the default by adding the following to elasticsearch.yml:
`index.number_of_replicas: 0`
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [July 5, 2017, 10:57pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/setting-default-number-of-replicas-for-new-indexes/47782/6 "2017-07-05T22:57:28Z")