# Space requirements

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/space-requirements/130278>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [May 2, 2018, 2:58pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/space-requirements/130278 "2018-05-02T14:58:24Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![srividya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ed8c4c/32.png) [@srividya](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/srividya)\
**Post date:** [May 2, 2018, 2:58pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/space-requirements/130278/1 "2018-05-02T14:58:24Z")

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Is there any calculator for disk space requirement for ES? For example for each k number of docs with n number of fields we ll need x GB. Can you give an example?  
Also how do we specify the retention policy for the documents?

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**Author:** ![Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/christian_dahlqvist/32/4617_2.png) [@Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Christian_Dahlqvist)\
**Post date:** [May 2, 2018, 3:23pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/space-requirements/130278/2 "2018-05-02T15:23:17Z")

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No, there is not, as it depends on a number of factors. Best way is to find out is to index a sample of your data and see. make sure that you index a good amount of data (at least a few tens of MB) as compression generally improves with shard size. You might be interested in the following resources:

> **[How many shards should I have in my Elasticsearch cluster?
	  	 | Elastic](https://www.elastic.co/blog/how-many-shards-should-i-have-in-my-elasticsearch-cluster)**
>
> Elasticsearch is a very versatile platform, that supports a variety of use cases, and provides great flexibility around data organisation and replication strategies. This flexibility can however somet...

[https://www.elastic.co/elasticon/conf/2016/sf/quantitative-cluster-sizing](https://www.elastic.co/elasticon/conf/2016/sf/quantitative-cluster-sizing)

> **[Filebeat modules, access logs and Elasticsearch storage requirements
	  	 |...](https://www.elastic.co/blog/filebeat-modiles-access-logs-and-elasticsearch-storage-requirements)**
>
> Elastic recently introduced Filebeat Modules, which are designed to make it extremely easy to ingest and gain insights from common log formats. These follow the principle that

> **[Part 2.0: The true story behind Elasticsearch storage requirements
	  	 |...](https://www.elastic.co/blog/elasticsearch-storage-the-true-story-2.0)**
>
> Several months ago we wrote about the true story behind Elasticsearch storage requirements and today we’re here to refresh those tests with the new Elasticsearch 2.0 beta-1 which includes several enha...

[https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/6.2/tune-for-disk-usage.html](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/6.2/tune-for-disk-usage.html)

For managing retention, I would recommend you look into [Curator](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/client/curator/current/index.html).

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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:** [May 30, 2018, 3:23pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/space-requirements/130278/3 "2018-05-30T15:23:18Z")

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