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{{es}} is a distributed document store. Instead of storing information as rows of columnar data, {{es}} stores complex data structures that have been serialized as JSON documents. When you have multiple {{es}} nodes in a cluster, stored documents are distributed across the cluster and can be accessed immediately from any node.
The topics in this section provides information about the architecture of {{es}} and how it stores and retrieves data:
::::{note} {{serverless-full}} scales with your workload and automates nodes, shards, and replicas for you. Some of the content in this section does not apply to you if you are using {{serverless-full}}. Instead, the information in this section will provide you information about how the platform works for you. ::::
- Cluster, nodes, and shards: Learn about the basic building blocks of an {{es}} cluster, including nodes, shards, primaries, and replicas.
- Node roles: Learn about the different roles that nodes can have in an {{es}} cluster.
- Reading and writing documents: Learn how {{es}} replicates read and write operations across shards and shard copies.
- Shard allocation, relocation, and recovery: Learn how {{es}} allocates and balances shards across nodes.
- Shard allocation awareness: Learn how to use custom node attributes to distribute shards across different racks or availability zones.
- Discovery and cluster formation: Learn about the cluster formation process including voting, adding nodes and publishing the cluster state.
- Shard request cache: Learn how {{es}} caches search requests to improve performance.
- {{kib}} task management: Learn how {{kib}} runs background tasks and distribute work across multiple {{kib}} instances to be persistent and scale with your deployment.