[[modules-discovery-settings]] === Discovery and cluster formation settings Discovery and cluster formation are affected by the following settings: `cluster.auto_shrink_voting_configuration`:: Controls whether the <> sheds departed nodes automatically, as long as it still contains at least 3 nodes. The default value is `true`. If set to `false`, the voting configuration never shrinks automatically and you must remove departed nodes manually with the <>. [[master-election-settings]]`cluster.election.back_off_time`:: Sets the amount to increase the upper bound on the wait before an election on each election failure. Note that this is _linear_ backoff. This defaults to `100ms` `cluster.election.duration`:: Sets how long each election is allowed to take before a node considers it to have failed and schedules a retry. This defaults to `500ms`. `cluster.election.initial_timeout`:: Sets the upper bound on how long a node will wait initially, or after the elected master fails, before attempting its first election. This defaults to `100ms`. `cluster.election.max_timeout`:: Sets the maximum upper bound on how long a node will wait before attempting an first election, so that an network partition that lasts for a long time does not result in excessively sparse elections. This defaults to `10s` [[fault-detection-settings]]`cluster.fault_detection.follower_check.interval`:: Sets how long the elected master waits between follower checks to each other node in the cluster. Defaults to `1s`. `cluster.fault_detection.follower_check.timeout`:: Sets how long the elected master waits for a response to a follower check before considering it to have failed. Defaults to `30s`. `cluster.fault_detection.follower_check.retry_count`:: Sets how many consecutive follower check failures must occur to each node before the elected master considers that node to be faulty and removes it from the cluster. Defaults to `3`. `cluster.fault_detection.leader_check.interval`:: Sets how long each node waits between checks of the elected master. Defaults to `1s`. `cluster.fault_detection.leader_check.timeout`:: Sets how long each node waits for a response to a leader check from the elected master before considering it to have failed. Defaults to `30s`. `cluster.fault_detection.leader_check.retry_count`:: Sets how many consecutive leader check failures must occur before a node considers the elected master to be faulty and attempts to find or elect a new master. Defaults to `3`. `cluster.follower_lag.timeout`:: Sets how long the master node waits to receive acknowledgements for cluster state updates from lagging nodes. The default value is `90s`. If a node does not successfully apply the cluster state update within this period of time, it is considered to have failed and is removed from the cluster. See <>. `cluster.initial_master_nodes`:: Sets a list of the <> or transport addresses of the initial set of master-eligible nodes in a brand-new cluster. By default this list is empty, meaning that this node expects to join a cluster that has already been bootstrapped. See <>. `cluster.join.timeout`:: Sets how long a node will wait after sending a request to join a cluster before it considers the request to have failed and retries. Defaults to `60s`. `cluster.max_voting_config_exclusions`:: Sets a limit on the number of voting configuration exclusions at any one time. The default value is `10`. See <>. `cluster.publish.timeout`:: Sets how long the master node waits for each cluster state update to be completely published to all nodes. The default value is `30s`. If this period of time elapses, the cluster state change is rejected. See <>. `discovery.cluster_formation_warning_timeout`:: Sets how long a node will try to form a cluster before logging a warning that the cluster did not form. Defaults to `10s`. If a cluster has not formed after `discovery.cluster_formation_warning_timeout` has elapsed then the node will log a warning message that starts with the phrase `master not discovered` which describes the current state of the discovery process. `discovery.find_peers_interval`:: Sets how long a node will wait before attempting another discovery round. Defaults to `1s`. `discovery.probe.connect_timeout`:: Sets how long to wait when attempting to connect to each address. Defaults to `3s`. `discovery.probe.handshake_timeout`:: Sets how long to wait when attempting to identify the remote node via a handshake. Defaults to `1s`. `discovery.request_peers_timeout`:: Sets how long a node will wait after asking its peers again before considering the request to have failed. Defaults to `3s`. `discovery.zen.hosts_provider`:: Specifies which type of <> provides the list of seed nodes. By default, it is the <>. [[no-master-block]]`discovery.zen.no_master_block`:: Specifies which operations are rejected when there is no active master in a cluster. This setting has two valid values: + -- `all`::: All operations on the node (both read and write operations) are rejected. This also applies for API cluster state read or write operations, like the get index settings, put mapping and cluster state API. `write`::: (default) Write operations are rejected. Read operations succeed, based on the last known cluster configuration. This situation may result in partial reads of stale data as this node may be isolated from the rest of the cluster. [NOTE] =============================== * The `discovery.zen.no_master_block` setting doesn't apply to nodes-based APIs (for example, cluster stats, node info, and node stats APIs). Requests to these APIs are not be blocked and can run on any available node. * For the cluster to be fully operational, it must have an active master. =============================== -- `discovery.zen.ping.unicast.hosts`:: Provides a list of master-eligible nodes in the cluster. The list contains either an array of hosts or a comma-delimited string. Each value has the format `host:port` or `host`, where `port` defaults to the setting `transport.profiles.default.port`. Note that IPv6 hosts must be bracketed. The default value is `127.0.0.1, [::1]`. See <>. `discovery.zen.ping.unicast.hosts.resolve_timeout`:: Sets the amount of time to wait for DNS lookups on each round of discovery. This is specified as a <> and defaults to `5s`.