# Sharding and Performance

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/sharding-and-performance/142657>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [August 1, 2018, 11:25pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/sharding-and-performance/142657 "2018-08-01T23:25:49Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![totessusan](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/totessusan/32/13028_2.png) [@totessusan](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/totessusan)\
**Post date:** [August 1, 2018, 11:25pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/sharding-and-performance/142657/1 "2018-08-01T23:25:49Z")

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I think I've finally gotten a grasp of the fundamental understanding of how to allocate shards for Elasticsearch. Please correct me if I'm wrong, this is what I've pieced together:

1. Ideally, there should only exist one shard per index, per node.
2. The only reason **why** we would ever want to configure more than one shard **IS** to over-allocate for future growth (i.e. adding more nodes to physically support the data).

Now, assuming what I have above is correct, I then wonder if there are **any** performance issues or differences if I only had **one node with 1 shard versus one node with 5 shards**. Can anyone enlighten me on this subject?

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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:** [August 29, 2018, 11:25pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/sharding-and-performance/142657/2 "2018-08-29T23:25:52Z")

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