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Elastic Docs ›Elasticsearch Guide [6.6] ›Managing the index lifecycle

Set up index lifecycle management policy

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Set up index lifecycle management policy

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This functionality is in beta and is subject to change. The design and code is less mature than official GA features and is being provided as-is with no warranties. Beta features are not subject to the support SLA of official GA features.

In order for an index to use an index lifecycle management policy to manage its lifecycle we must first define a lifecycle policy for it to use. The following request creates a policy called my_policy in Elasticsearch which we can later use to manage our indexes.

PUT _ilm/policy/my_policy
{
  "policy": {
    "phases": {
      "hot": {
        "actions": {
          "rollover": {
            "max_size": "25GB" 
          }
        }
      },
      "delete": {
        "min_age": "30d",
        "actions": {
          "delete": {} 
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Rollover the index when it reaches 25GB in size

Delete the index when its 30 days old

index lifecycle management will manage an index using the policy defined in the index.lifecycle.name index setting. If this setting does not exist in the settings for a particular index, index lifecycle management will not manage that index.

To set the policy for an index there are two options:

  1. Apply the policy to an index template and bootstrap creating the first index
  2. Apply the policy to a new index in a create index request
« Full Policy Applying a policy to an index template »