# Sharding by term/facet **URL:** \ **Category:** Elasticsearch\ **Created:** [February 6, 2013, 7:59pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/sharding-by-term-facet/10643 "2013-02-06T19:59:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Josiah\_Carlson](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/josiah_carlson/32/2501_2.png) [@Josiah\_Carlson](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Josiah_Carlson)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2013, 7:59pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/sharding-by-term-facet/10643/1 "2013-02-06T19:59:42Z")
Hello, I've been planning on using ES in a search application, and it could grow very quickly, so I've been looking at ways to pre-shard my data. Now, it turns out that every document that I'm indexing has a list of string facets, and all of my searches will have at least one required facet, so a natural sharding method would be to shard based on these facets (if a document has 7 facets, I would assume that it could be available on 7 shards). Questions: Is there a way to automatically shard based on facets? If so, how? If not, could I write a plugin to do so? If I do shard on facets, will routing to the correct shards be done automatically, without going to the entire cluster? If not, is there a way for me to write a plugin to make this happen? Thank you, - Josiah -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "elasticsearch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [elasticsearch+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com](mailto:elasticsearch+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com). For more options, visit [https://groups.google.com/groups/opt\_out](https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out). ---
**Author:** ![ppearcy](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/ppearcy/32/980_2.png) [@ppearcy](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/ppearcy)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2013, 6:37am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/sharding-by-term-facet/10643/2 "2013-02-07T06:37:39Z")
I think the best you can do is with routing([Elasticsearch Platform — Find real-time answers at scale | Elastic](http://www.elasticsearch.org/guide/reference/mapping/routing-field.html)), but that is only a single value per doc. I would test around how your use case scales. Best Regards, Paul On Wednesday, February 6, 2013 12:59:42 PM UTC-7, Josiah Carlson wrote: > Hello, > > I've been planning on using ES in a search application, and it could grow > very quickly, so I've been looking at ways to pre-shard my data. > > Now, it turns out that every document that I'm indexing has a list of > string facets, and all of my searches will have at least one required > facet, so a natural sharding method would be to shard based on these facets > (if a document has 7 facets, I would assume that it could be available on 7 > shards). > > Questions: > Is there a way to automatically shard based on facets? > If so, how? If not, could I write a plugin to do so? > If I do shard on facets, will routing to the correct shards be done > automatically, without going to the entire cluster? > If not, is there a way for me to write a plugin to make this happen? > > Thank you, > > - Josiah -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "elasticsearch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [elasticsearch+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com](mailto:elasticsearch+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com). For more options, visit [https://groups.google.com/groups/opt\_out](https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out). ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2017, 2:52am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/sharding-by-term-facet/10643/3 "2017-07-06T02:52:37Z")