# Uneven Shard Distribution
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/uneven-shard-distribution/112824
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [December 21, 2017, 12:55pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/uneven-shard-distribution/112824 "2017-12-21T12:55:14Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@a99lex](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/a99lex)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2017, 12:55pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/uneven-shard-distribution/112824/1 "2017-12-21T12:55:15Z")
Hi,need some help with uneven shard distribution.
I have 5 data nodes and one node have 1 TB more than the rest. It has fever shards but more data?
shards disk.indices disk.used disk.avail disk.total disk.percent host ip node
215 2.2tb 2.4tb 1.8tb 4.2tb 56 Nodenames
163 3.5tb 3.7tb 515.6gb 4.2tb 88 Nodenames
214 1.9tb 2.2tb 2tb 4.2tb 51 Nodenames
215 2.2tb 2.4tb 1.8tb 4.2tb 56 Nodenames
215 2.2tb 2.4tb 1.8tb 4.2tb 57 Nodenames
Is this normal behavior or do we need to tune shard allocation?
Regards
Alexander Schou
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### Author:  [@jpountz](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/jpountz)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2017, 2:20pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/uneven-shard-distribution/112824/2 "2017-12-21T14:20:57Z")
Balancing shards that have different sizes is not an easy problem: should Elasticsearch optimize for even number of shards or even disk usage?
You can use the cluster allocation explain API to understand why things are not moving [https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/master/cluster-allocation-explain.html](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/master/cluster-allocation-explain.html).
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [January 18, 2018, 2:21pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/uneven-shard-distribution/112824/3 "2018-01-18T14:21:14Z")
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