How to add a new node to my Elasticsearch cluster

Question

My cluster has a yellow health as it has only one single node, so the replicas remain unasigned simply because no other node is available to contain them.

Answer 1

Complete steps on Windows Box are:

1. unzip elastic, say, to C:\ELK\elastic\ run command bin\service install elastic-search-x64-node01 which will create service named elastic-search-x64-node01

2. edit elasticsearch.yml config file:

   cluster.name: Animals
   node.name: Snake
   node.master: true
   node.data: true
   path.data: C:\ELK\storage\data
   path.logs: C:\ELK\storage\logs
   http.port: 9200
   discovery.zen.ping.multicast.enabled: false
   discovery.zen.ping.unicast.hosts: ["127.0.0.1"]
   

3. run service manager elastic-search-x64-node01 and set-up your services rules and start the service

4. unzip elastic, say, to C:\ELK\elastic2\ run command bin\service install elastic-search-x64-node02 which will create service named elastic-search-x64-node02

5. edit elasticsearch.yml config file:

   cluster.name: Animals
   node.name: Baboon
   node.master: false
   node.data: true
   path.data: C:\ELK\storage\data
   path.logs: C:\ELK\storage\logs
   http.port: 9201
   discovery.zen.ping.multicast.enabled: false
   discovery.zen.ping.unicast.hosts: ["127.0.0.1"]
   

6. run service manager elastic-search-x64-node02 and set-up your services rules and start the service

At this point you have 2 separate nodes (they store data in the same folder, but I'm too laze to edit path.data for second node) as 2 separate Windows Services and GET http://localhost:9200/_cluster/health shows something like:

{
  "cluster_name": "Animals",
  "status": "green",
  "timed_out": false,
  "number_of_nodes": 2,
  "number_of_data_nodes": 2,
  "active_primary_shards": 4,
  "active_shards": 8,
  "relocating_shards": 0,
  "initializing_shards": 0,
  "unassigned_shards": 0,
  "delayed_unassigned_shards": 0,
  "number_of_pending_tasks": 0,
  "number_of_in_flight_fetch": 0,
  "task_max_waiting_in_queue_millis": 0,
  "active_shards_percent_as_number": 100
}