# Shadow replica's issue

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/shadow-replicas-issue/35584>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [November 25, 2015, 4:29pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/shadow-replicas-issue/35584 "2015-11-25T16:29:16Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Rudy\_Gevaert](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/rudy_gevaert/32/5904_2.png) [@Rudy\_Gevaert](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Rudy_Gevaert)\
**Post date:** [November 25, 2015, 4:29pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/shadow-replicas-issue/35584/1 "2015-11-25T16:29:16Z")

</div>

Hello,

I'm confused on how to use shadow replica's.

My setup is as follows. 3 node cluster. ES 2.1.0

```
cluster.name: elksetuppoc
node.name: elastic6
index.number_of_shards: 5
index.number_of_replicas: 1
gateway.recover_after_nodes: 2
gateway.recover_after_time: 5m
gateway.expected_nodes: 3
bootstrap.mlockall: true
discovery.zen.minimum_master_nodes: 2
discovery.zen.ping.multicast.enabled: false
discovery.zen.ping.unicast.hosts: ["node1", "node2","node3"]
network.host: 0.0.0.0
node.add_id_to_custom_path: false
path.shared_data: /srv/elasticsearch

```

/srv/elasticsearch is an NFS share that is \*\* r/w on all nodes\*\*

UPDATE: 30/11 I tested without NFS and no shared storage and I have the same issue.

My goal is to use shadow replicas so I can move older data to this NFS share. Either I'm doing something wrong. Or I have misunderstood something. Or I have git a bug. 😉

I change the number of replicas to 0 because data will be on shared file system

```
curl -XPUT http://node1:9200/logstash-2015.11.07/_settings -d '
{
  "index": {
  "number_of_replicas": 0
  }
}
'

```

Up and till here I can see on the backend that the number of replicas is reduced.

I close the index because I can't change data\_path when it is open

```
curl -XPOST http://node1:9200/logstash-2015.11.07/_close

```

that works

I change datapath, and enable shadow\_replicas

```
curl -XPUT http://node1:9200/logstash-2015.11.07/_settings -d '
{
  "index": {
  "data_path": "/srv/elasticsearch",
  "shadow_replicas": true
  }
}
'
curl -XPOST http://node1:9200/logstash-2015.11.07/_close

```

That also succeeds, however on disk I see

```
root@node1:~# find /srv/elasticsearch/logstash-2015.11.07/
/srv/elasticsearch/logstash-2015.11.07/
/srv/elasticsearch/logstash-2015.11.07/2
/srv/elasticsearch/logstash-2015.11.07/2/index
/srv/elasticsearch/logstash-2015.11.07/0
/srv/elasticsearch/logstash-2015.11.07/0/index
/srv/elasticsearch/logstash-2015.11.07/4
/srv/elasticsearch/logstash-2015.11.07/4/index
/srv/elasticsearch/logstash-2015.11.07/1
/srv/elasticsearch/logstash-2015.11.07/1/index
/srv/elasticsearch/logstash-2015.11.07/3
/srv/elasticsearch/logstash-2015.11.07/3/index

```

And those dirs are emtpy

The data is still under /var/lib/elasticsearch/

```
root@node1:~# du -hs /var/lib/elasticsearch/elksetuppoc/nodes/0/indices/logstash-2015.11.07/*
112K /var/lib/elasticsearch/elksetuppoc/nodes/0/indices/logstash-2015.11.07/3
272K /var/lib/elasticsearch/elksetuppoc/nodes/0/indices/logstash-2015.11.07/4
8.0K /var/lib/elasticsearch/elksetuppoc/nodes/0/indices/logstash-2015.11.07/_state

root@node2:~# du -hs /var/lib/elasticsearch/elksetuppoc/nodes/0/indices/logstash-2015.11.07/*
88K /var/lib/elasticsearch/elksetuppoc/nodes/0/indices/logstash-2015.11.07/0
88K /var/lib/elasticsearch/elksetuppoc/nodes/0/indices/logstash-2015.11.07/1
72K /var/lib/elasticsearch/elksetuppoc/nodes/0/indices/logstash-2015.11.07/2
8.0K /var/lib/elasticsearch/elksetuppoc/nodes/0/indices/logstash-2015.11.07/_state

root@node3:~# du -hs /var/lib/elasticsearch/elksetuppoc/nodes/0/indices/logstash-2015.11.07/*
72K /var/lib/elasticsearch/elksetuppoc/nodes/0/indices/logstash-2015.11.07/0
8.0K /var/lib/elasticsearch/elksetuppoc/nodes/0/indices/logstash-2015.11.07/_state

```

When I use kibana to search for the data it doesn't show any entries for those indexes. The others that weren't moved are displayed correctly.

Am I missing something in my setup or did I misunderstand something?

Thanks in advance,

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [July 5, 2017, 11:34pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/shadow-replicas-issue/35584/2 "2017-07-05T23:34:52Z")

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