# What are the common situations in which primary shard goes down

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-are-the-common-situations-in-which-primary-shard-goes-down/199576>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [September 16, 2019, 5:23am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-are-the-common-situations-in-which-primary-shard-goes-down/199576 "2019-09-16T05:23:09Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![MKU](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/mku/32/48327_2.png) [@MKU](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/MKU)\
**Post date:** [September 16, 2019, 5:23am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-are-the-common-situations-in-which-primary-shard-goes-down/199576/1 "2019-09-16T05:23:09Z")

</div>

Hi,  
I am doing a case study, and i would want to know the situations in which primary shard goes down, which can cause data loss and how to avoid them.

Thanks

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![DavidTurner](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/davidturner/32/22453_2.png) [@DavidTurner](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/DavidTurner)\
**Post date:** [September 16, 2019, 6:08am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-are-the-common-situations-in-which-primary-shard-goes-down/199576/2 "2019-09-16T06:08:30Z")

</div>

In a properly configured cluster if a primary shard fails then a replica will take over and there will be no loss of data. The commonest situation that leads to the loss of data is where the cluster is not properly configured: either it has indices with `index.number_of_replicas: 0` or else it has unassigned replica shards and its health is reported as `yellow`. In that case a hardware failure on a node (e.g. a broken disk) leads to data loss.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [October 14, 2019, 6:08am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-are-the-common-situations-in-which-primary-shard-goes-down/199576/3 "2019-10-14T06:08:38Z")

</div>

Closed on October 14, 2019, 6:08am UTC

This topic was automatically closed 28 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.