[[disk-based-shard-allocation]]
==== Disk-based shard allocation settings
[[disk-based-shard-allocation-description]]
// tag::disk-based-shard-allocation-description-tag[]

The disk-based shard allocator ensures that all nodes have enough disk space
without performing more shard movements than necessary. It allocates shards
based on a pair of thresholds known as the _low watermark_ and the _high
watermark_. Its primary goal is to ensure that no node exceeds the high
watermark, or at least that any such overage is only temporary. If a node
exceeds the high watermark then {es} will solve this by moving some of its
shards onto other nodes in the cluster.

NOTE: It is normal for nodes to temporarily exceed the high watermark from time
to time.

The allocator also tries to keep nodes clear of the high watermark by
forbidding the allocation of more shards to a node that exceeds the low
watermark. Importantly, if all of your nodes have exceeded the low watermark
then no new shards can be allocated and {es} will not be able to move any
shards between nodes in order to keep the disk usage below the high watermark.
You must ensure that your cluster has enough disk space in total and that there
are always some nodes below the low watermark.

Shard movements triggered by the disk-based shard allocator must also satisfy
all other shard allocation rules such as
<<cluster-shard-allocation-filtering,allocation filtering>> and
<<forced-awareness,forced awareness>>. If these rules are too strict then they
can also prevent the shard movements needed to keep the nodes' disk usage under
control. If you are using <<data-tiers,data tiers>> then {es} automatically
configures allocation filtering rules to place shards within the appropriate
tier, which means that the disk-based shard allocator works independently
within each tier.

If a node is filling up its disk faster than {es} can move shards elsewhere
then there is a risk that the disk will completely fill up. To prevent this, as
a last resort, once the disk usage reaches the _flood-stage_ watermark {es}
will block writes to indices with a shard on the affected node. It will also
continue to move shards onto the other nodes in the cluster. When disk usage
on the affected node drops below the high watermark, {es} automatically removes
the write block.

[[disk-based-shard-allocation-does-not-balance]]
[TIP]
====
It is normal for the nodes in your cluster to be using very different amounts
of disk space. The <<shards-rebalancing-settings,balance>> of the cluster
depends only on the number of shards on each node and the indices to which
those shards belong. It considers neither the sizes of these shards nor the
available disk space on each node, for the following reasons:

* Disk usage changes over time. Balancing the disk usage of individual nodes
would require a lot more shard movements, perhaps even wastefully undoing
earlier movements. Moving a shard consumes resources such as I/O and network
bandwidth and may evict data from the filesystem cache. These resources are
better spent handling your searches and indexing where possible.

* A cluster with equal disk usage on every node typically performs no better
than one that has unequal disk usage, as long as no disk is too full.
====

You can use the following settings to control disk-based allocation:

[[cluster-routing-disk-threshold]]
// tag::cluster-routing-disk-threshold-tag[]
`cluster.routing.allocation.disk.threshold_enabled` {ess-icon}::
(<<dynamic-cluster-setting,Dynamic>>)
Defaults to `true`. Set to `false` to disable the disk allocation decider.
// end::cluster-routing-disk-threshold-tag[]

[[cluster-routing-watermark-low]]
// tag::cluster-routing-watermark-low-tag[]
`cluster.routing.allocation.disk.watermark.low` {ess-icon}::
(<<dynamic-cluster-setting,Dynamic>>)
Controls the low watermark for disk usage. It defaults to `85%`, meaning that {es} will not allocate shards to nodes that have more than 85% disk used. It can also be set to an absolute byte value (like `500mb`) to prevent {es} from allocating shards if less than the specified amount of space is available. This setting has no effect on the primary shards of newly-created indices but will prevent their replicas from being allocated.
// end::cluster-routing-watermark-low-tag[]

[[cluster-routing-watermark-high]]
// tag::cluster-routing-watermark-high-tag[]
`cluster.routing.allocation.disk.watermark.high` {ess-icon}::
(<<dynamic-cluster-setting,Dynamic>>)
Controls the high watermark. It defaults to `90%`, meaning that {es} will attempt to relocate shards away from a node whose disk usage is above 90%. It can also be set to an absolute byte value (similarly to the low watermark) to relocate shards away from a node if it has less than the specified amount of free space. This setting affects the allocation of all shards, whether previously allocated or not.
// end::cluster-routing-watermark-high-tag[]

`cluster.routing.allocation.disk.watermark.enable_for_single_data_node`::
    (<<static-cluster-setting,Static>>)
    For a single data node, the default is to disregard disk watermarks when
    making an allocation decision. This is deprecated behavior and will be
    changed in 8.0. This setting can be set to `true` to enable the
    disk watermarks for a single data node cluster (will become default in 8.0).

[[cluster-routing-flood-stage]]
// tag::cluster-routing-flood-stage-tag[]
`cluster.routing.allocation.disk.watermark.flood_stage` {ess-icon}::
+
--
(<<dynamic-cluster-setting,Dynamic>>)
Controls the flood stage watermark, which defaults to 95%. {es} enforces a read-only index block (`index.blocks.read_only_allow_delete`) on every index that has one or more shards allocated on the node, and that has at least one disk exceeding the flood stage. This setting is a last resort to prevent nodes from running out of disk space. The index block is automatically released when the disk utilization falls below the high watermark.

NOTE: You cannot mix the usage of percentage values and byte values within
these settings. Either all values are set to percentage values, or all are set to byte values. This enforcement is so that {es} can validate that the settings are internally consistent, ensuring that the low disk threshold is less than the high disk threshold, and the high disk threshold is less than the flood stage threshold.

An example of resetting the read-only index block on the `my-index-000001` index:

[source,console]
--------------------------------------------------
PUT /my-index-000001/_settings
{
  "index.blocks.read_only_allow_delete": null
}
--------------------------------------------------
// TEST[setup:my_index]
--
// end::cluster-routing-flood-stage-tag[]

[[cluster-routing-flood-stage-frozen]]
// tag::cluster-routing-flood-stage-tag[]
`cluster.routing.allocation.disk.watermark.flood_stage.frozen` {ess-icon}::
(<<dynamic-cluster-setting,Dynamic>>)
Controls the flood stage watermark for dedicated frozen nodes, which defaults to
95%.

`cluster.routing.allocation.disk.watermark.flood_stage.frozen.max_headroom` {ess-icon}::
(<<dynamic-cluster-setting,Dynamic>>)
Controls the max headroom for the flood stage watermark for dedicated frozen
nodes. Defaults to 20GB when
`cluster.routing.allocation.disk.watermark.flood_stage.frozen` is not explicitly
set. This caps the amount of free space required on dedicated frozen nodes.

`cluster.info.update.interval`::
    (<<dynamic-cluster-setting,Dynamic>>)
    How often {es} should check on disk usage for each node in the
    cluster. Defaults to `30s`.

`cluster.routing.allocation.disk.include_relocations`::

    deprecated:[7.5.0, Future versions will always account for relocations.]
    Defaults to +true+, which means that Elasticsearch will take into account
    shards that are currently being relocated to the target node when computing
    a node's disk usage. Taking relocating shards' sizes into account may,
    however, mean that the disk usage for a node is incorrectly estimated on
    the high side, since the relocation could be 90% complete and a recently
    retrieved disk usage would include the total size of the relocating shard
    as well as the space already used by the running relocation.


NOTE: Percentage values refer to used disk space, while byte values refer to
free disk space. This can be confusing, since it flips the meaning of high and
low. For example, it makes sense to set the low watermark to 10gb and the high
watermark to 5gb, but not the other way around.

An example of updating the low watermark to at least 100 gigabytes free, a high
watermark of at least 50 gigabytes free, and a flood stage watermark of 10
gigabytes free, and updating the information about the cluster every minute:

[source,console]
--------------------------------------------------
PUT _cluster/settings
{
  "transient": {
    "cluster.routing.allocation.disk.watermark.low": "100gb",
    "cluster.routing.allocation.disk.watermark.high": "50gb",
    "cluster.routing.allocation.disk.watermark.flood_stage": "10gb",
    "cluster.info.update.interval": "1m"
  }
}
--------------------------------------------------
