Configure index lifecycle management

Use the index lifecycle management (ILM) feature in Elasticsearch to manage your Packetbeat their backing indices of your data streams as they age. Packetbeat loads the default policy automatically and applies it to any data streams created by Packetbeat.

You can view and edit the policy in the Index lifecycle policies UI in Kibana. For more information about working with the UI, see Index lifecyle policies.

Example configuration:

setup.ilm.enabled: true

You can specify the following settings in the setup.ilm section of the packetbeat.yml config file:

Enables or disables index lifecycle management on any new indices created by Packetbeat. Valid values are true and false.

The name to use for the lifecycle policy. The default is packetbeat.

The path to a JSON file that contains a lifecycle policy configuration. Use this setting to load your own lifecycle policy.

For more information about lifecycle policies, see Set up index lifecycle management policy in the Elasticsearch Reference.

When set to false, disables the check for an existing lifecycle policy. The default is true. You need to disable this check if the Packetbeat user connecting to a secured cluster doesn’t have the read_ilm privilege.

If you set this option to false, lifecycle policy will not be installed, even if setup.ilm.overwrite is set to true.

When set to true, the lifecycle policy is overwritten at startup. The default is false.