# Why does heap usage keep approaching 100%?

**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/why-does-heap-usage-keep-approaching-100/1097
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [May 21, 2015, 2:40pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/why-does-heap-usage-keep-approaching-100/1097 "2015-05-21T14:40:57Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 5

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### Author: ![Camilo\_Sierra](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/camilo_sierra/32/14397_2.png) [@Camilo\_Sierra](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Camilo_Sierra)
#### Post date: [May 21, 2015, 3:15pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/why-does-heap-usage-keep-approaching-100/1097/5 "2015-05-21T15:15:53Z")

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@warkolm in this post already speak about the number of shards and heap usage - [Large heap usage with each node - #8 by javadevmtl](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/large-heap-usage-with-each-node/969/8)

> That's the problem then. Each shard is a lucene instance, it requires resources to maintain.

> Reduce that to a reasonable number and you should see better resources usage.

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