Cluster requirements

The requirements for your cluster—the number of nodes and the hardware specifications of each node—depend on several factors, including the following:

  • Total volume of data
  • Data ingest rate
  • Average record size
  • Data mapping
  • Types of queries being run
  • System performance requirements

There's no one size fits all formula to determine cluster requirements for a given Elasticsearch use case. The best approach is to meticulously test performance while changing variables, such as shard size, the number of nodes in the cluster, and hardware configurations until an optimal solution is found. This section focuses on high-level guidelines to consider when configuring your cluster.

It's a good idea to run at least three nodes in a production environment ...

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