# Unable to decommission nodes from cluster
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unable-to-decommission-nodes-from-cluster/1490
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [May 28, 2015, 3:21pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unable-to-decommission-nodes-from-cluster/1490 "2015-05-28T15:21:35Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@shkrajat](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/shkrajat)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2015, 3:21pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unable-to-decommission-nodes-from-cluster/1490/1 "2015-05-28T15:21:35Z")
Hi all,
I was running a cluster with 3 nodes, then I decided to replace these 3 nodes because they were under utilised.
So I added 3 fresh nodes with lower performance (especially disk space).
After the cluster stabilised, I fired the decommission API for a node, but it didn't do anything.
``
```
$ curl -X PUT http://master.node:9200/_cluster/settings -d '{
"transient" :{
"cluster.routing.allocation.exclude._ip" : "a.b.c.d"
}
}'
```
The node is unaffected, it's shards are not getting relocated. I crosschecked with get API and it shows - `
$ curl -X GET http://master.node:9200/_cluster/settings
Output
{
"persistent": {
"cluster": {
"routing": {
"allocation": {
"enable": "all",
"disable_allocation": "false"
}
}
}
},
"transient": {
"cluster": {
"routing": {
"allocation": {
"exclude": {
"_ip": "a.b.c.d"
}
}
}
}
}
}
` What am I missing here, why this node is not getting decommissioned?
---
### Author:  [@warkolm](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/warkolm)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2015, 2:38am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unable-to-decommission-nodes-from-cluster/1490/2 "2015-05-29T02:38:26Z")
Can you try using hostnames?
---
### Author:  [@shkrajat](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/shkrajat)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2015, 5:28am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unable-to-decommission-nodes-from-cluster/1490/3 "2015-05-29T05:28:16Z")
Tried using hostname, and it works! 😃
Thanks a bunch!
Can you please explain why it wasn't working with IP?
---
### Author:  [@warkolm](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/warkolm)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2015, 6:48am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unable-to-decommission-nodes-from-cluster/1490/4 "2015-05-29T06:48:24Z")
Maybe ES wasn't bound to that IP?
---
### Author:  [@shkrajat](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/shkrajat)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2015, 7:28am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unable-to-decommission-nodes-from-cluster/1490/5 "2015-05-29T07:28:14Z")
Just checked, node information shows "IP" as "127.0.0.1".
``
```
{
"cluster_name": "cluster.name",
"nodes": {
"node_id": {
"name": "node.name",
"transport_address": "inet[/10.0.0.xx:9300]",
"host": "localhost",
"ip": "127.0.0.1",
"version": "1.4.0",
"build": "bc94bd8",
"http_address": "inet[/10.0.0.xx:9200]",
"settings": {
"index": { ....
....
```
---
### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2017, 12:10am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unable-to-decommission-nodes-from-cluster/1490/6 "2017-07-06T00:10:54Z")