Migrate to dedicated read nodes

Migrate an existing on-demand or pod-based Pinecone index to dedicated read nodes.

From a pod-based index

You can't migrate a pod-based index directly to dedicated read nodes. First complete Migrate a pod-based index to serverless, which creates a new on-demand index with your data.

If that index has multiple namespaces, consolidate to one namespace, or plan a different architecture. Dedicated read nodes support only a single namespace.

From an on-demand (serverless) index

To migrate an existing on-demand index to dedicated read nodes (including one you created by migrating from pods), follow these steps:

Create a backup of your index
Before migrating, back up your index so you can return to on-demand later, either by converting back or by restoring the backup to a new on-demand index.
Delete extra namespaces
If your index has multiple namespaces, delete all of them except the one you want to keep. Dedicated read nodes support only a single namespace.
If this is a production index, be sure to make a backup before deleting namespaces. Or, if you need multiple namespaces, contact support to discuss early access to multi-namespace support for dedicated read nodes.
Calculate your index size
Determine how many shards you need by sizing your index.

Migrate the index

Call Configure an index. In the request body, in the spec.serverless.read_capacity object, set the following fields:

Field	Value	Notes
`mode`	`Dedicated`
`dedicated.node_type`	`b1` or `t1`	See node types
`dedicated.scaling`	`Manual`	The only supported value
`dedicated.manual.shards`	Number of shards needed	Minimum 1 shard; each shard provides 250 GB of storage
`dedicated.manual.replicas`	Number of replicas needed	Minimum 0 (this pauses the index)

This example migrates an index to dedicated read nodes using b1 nodes, one shard, and one replica:

Request

PINECONE_API_KEY="YOUR_API_KEY"
INDEX_NAME="YOUR_INDEX_NAME"

curl -X PATCH "https://api.pinecone.io/indexes/$INDEX_NAME" \
     -H "Accept: application/json" \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -H "Api-Key: $PINECONE_API_KEY" \
     -H "X-Pinecone-Api-Version: 2025-10" \
     -d '{
           "spec": {
             "serverless": {
               "read_capacity": {
                 "mode": "Dedicated",
                 "dedicated": {
                   "node_type": "b1",
                   "scaling": "Manual",
                   "manual": {
                     "shards": 1,
                     "replicas": 1
                   }
                 }
               }
             }
           }
         }'

Show 15 more linesShow less

Response

{
  "name": "example-index-to-migrate",
  "vector_type": "dense",
  "metric": "cosine",
  "dimension": 1024,
  "status": {
    "ready": true,
    "state": "Ready"
  },
  "host": "example-index-to-migrate-1c6ab6aa.svc.aped-4627-b74a.pinecone.io",
  "spec": {
    "serverless": {
      "region": "us-east-1",
      "cloud": "aws",
      "read_capacity": {
        "mode": "Dedicated",
        "dedicated": {
          "node_type": "b1",
          "scaling": "Manual",
          "manual": {
            "shards": 1, // <---- desired state
            "replicas": 1
          }
        },
        "status": {
          "state": "Migrating",
          "current_shards": null, //<---- current state
          "current_replicas": null
        }
      }
    }
  },
  "deletion_protection": "disabled",
  "tags": null,
  "embed": {
    "model": "llama-text-embed-v2",
    "field_map": {
      "text": "text"
    },
    "dimension": 1024,
    "metric": "cosine",
    "write_parameters": {
      "dimension": 1024,
      "input_type": "passage",
      "truncate": "END"
    },
    "read_parameters": {
      "dimension": 1024,
      "input_type": "query",
      "truncate": "END"
    },
    "vector_type": "dense"
  }
}

Show 44 more linesShow less

The response includes two status fields:

Field	Description
`status.state`	Overall index status (for example, `Initializing`, `Ready`, `Terminating`)
`spec.serverless.read_capacity.status.state`	Read capacity status (`Migrating`, `Scaling`, `Ready`, `Error`)

Monitor the migration
Check the status until spec.serverless.read_capacity.status.state is Ready.
Verify performance
Confirm the index meets your latency and throughput targets.