[[recovery]]
=== Indices Recovery

<<cat-recovery,Peer recovery>> is the process used to build a new copy of a
shard on a node by copying data from the primary. {es} uses this peer recovery
process to rebuild shard copies that were lost if a node has failed, and uses
the same process when migrating a shard copy between nodes to rebalance the
cluster or to honor any changes to the <<modules-cluster,shard allocation
settings>>.

The following _expert_ setting can be set to manage the resources consumed by
peer recoveries:

`indices.recovery.max_bytes_per_sec`::
    Limits the total inbound and outbound peer recovery traffic on each node.
    Since this limit applies on each node, but there may be many nodes
    performing peer recoveries concurrently, the total amount of peer recovery
    traffic within a cluster may be much higher than this limit. If you set
    this limit too high then there is a risk that ongoing peer recoveries will
    consume an excess of bandwidth (or other resources) which could destabilize
    the cluster. Defaults to `40mb`.

This setting can be dynamically updated on a live cluster with the
<<cluster-update-settings,cluster-update-settings>> API.
