Adding Step To ILM Policy Doesn't Apply To Index In Completed Phase

[Alsheh]

Suppose an index is using an ILM policy that has Hot and Warm phases. The index has finished executed the Hot and Warm phases and now is in the Completed phase. The ILM policy that the index uses is now extended by adding the Cold phase. However, the index continues to use the old version of the ILM policy and doesn't execute the Cold phase unless moved to the next step manually POST _ilm/move/<index>.

Unfortunately, moving indices to the next ILM step can only be done one index at a time, very inconvenient when there are many indices. How to make indices in Completed phases automatically respond to extension of ILM policies?

[gbrown (Gordon Brown)]

Unfortunately, there is not currently a way to do this.

What I would recommend in this case for now is creating a new policy that contains only the new cold phase, removing the previous policy from the indices in question, and then setting those indices to use the new cold-only policy. Once all those indices have aged out, you can then delete the cold-only policy.