# Should dedicated master nodes and data nodes be considered separately?

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/should-dedicated-master-nodes-and-data-nodes-be-considered-separately/75093>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [February 14, 2017, 6:49pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/should-dedicated-master-nodes-and-data-nodes-be-considered-separately/75093 "2017-02-14T18:49:30Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 14

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**Author:** ![theuntergeek](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/theuntergeek/32/44961_2.png) [@theuntergeek](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/theuntergeek)\
**Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 10:12pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/should-dedicated-master-nodes-and-data-nodes-be-considered-separately/75093/14 "2017-02-14T22:12:39Z")

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> [@sumo7](#):
>
> So would you recommend I create only one master-eligible data node initially and as the traffic grows, I add more data nodes?

Unless you're starting with at least 2 data nodes, there's no reason to start out with 3 masters. The reason is that there is no redundancy of data, so there's no need for redundancy of masters. You can't even spread the load without multiple data nodes, and there would be no replica shards, so your cluster would always be in the yellow state.

> [@sumo7](#):
>
> But every doc I've read on Elasticsearch says I should have at least three nodes to start.

Three master nodes _is_ the way to start, but only if you're building a full cluster, which at minimum is 3 master nodes plus _at least_ 2 data nodes. As mentioned, a single data node is not able to form a fully redundant cluster because there's no place for replicas. If you aren't going to have at least 2 data nodes to start, there's no reason to have more than 1 node anyway.

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