diff --git a/docs/reference/getting-started.asciidoc b/docs/reference/getting-started.asciidoc
index b0889a723f511..1cc5c31cd84ce 100755
--- a/docs/reference/getting-started.asciidoc
+++ b/docs/reference/getting-started.asciidoc
@@ -93,7 +93,8 @@ Replication is important for two primary reasons:
 
 
 To summarize, each index can be split into multiple shards. An index can also be replicated zero (meaning no replicas) or more times. Once replicated, each index will have primary shards (the original shards that were replicated from) and replica shards (the copies of the primary shards).
-The number of shards and replicas can be defined per index at the time the index is created. After the index is created, you may change the number of replicas dynamically anytime but you cannot change the number of shards after-the-fact.
+
+The number of shards and replicas can be defined per index at the time the index is created. After the index is created, you may also change the number of replicas dynamically anytime. You can change the number of shards for an existing index using the {ref}/indices-shrink-index.html[`_shrink`] and {ref}/indices-split-index.html[`_split`] APIs, however this is not a trivial task and pre-planning for the correct number of shards is the optimal approach.
 
 By default, each index in Elasticsearch is allocated 5 primary shards and 1 replica which means that if you have at least two nodes in your cluster, your index will have 5 primary shards and another 5 replica shards (1 complete replica) for a total of 10 shards per index.