Methods and systems are described that involve replica placement strategy for distributed systems. At the time of index creation, initial index replica placement is decided. The first index replica is placed locally on the current processing server node. This server node operates as a master host for the first replica. The other index replicas are placed on different hosts depending on the index type, split index or non-split index, and a set of criteria. For non-split indexes, the set of criteria includes: a number of recently created replicas per host, resource usage per host, and a total number of replicas per host. For split indexes, the set of criteria includes: a number of replicas of any split index part per host and a number of local first replicas of split index parts. If all criteria are equal, the first host in alphanumeric ordering receives a next replica.