# Applying ILM Policy but data not getting deleted **URL:** \ **Category:** Elasticsearch\ **Tags:** ilm-index-lifecycle-management\ **Created:** [September 15, 2020, 6:42am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/applying-ilm-policy-but-data-not-getting-deleted/248605 "2020-09-15T06:42:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![vikramaddagulla](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/vikramaddagulla/32/139858_2.png) [@vikramaddagulla](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/vikramaddagulla)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2020, 6:42am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/applying-ilm-policy-but-data-not-getting-deleted/248605/1 "2020-09-15T06:42:24Z")
Hello, I am working on configuring an ILM policy to delete any data in an index which is older than 30 days / more than 50GB. I have an index which has data about 97GB at the moment. ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/f/d/fdfafaf67ec51b44a9b293ad7bf25e4bf5c955e9.png) I have configured an alias for this index as shown in the above image.. I have configured a ILM policy to perform rollover of index if any data is more than 50GB and then delete the data after 10 days... Below is the setting of the same... ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/f/0/f034871dd0155a6eee4edaffaf30821cc890f85b.png) ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/c/4/c46395e8a50096a5a98f661210317a2256a7c6fc.png) I have then applied the above policy to the index which has data of 97GB. However, even after applying the policy, I do not see the data being deleted from the index... Could someone please let me know if the above configuration is correct or if I am missing anything ? ---
**Author:** ![Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/christian_dahlqvist/32/4617_2.png) [@Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Christian_Dahlqvist)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2020, 6:47am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/applying-ilm-policy-but-data-not-getting-deleted/248605/2 "2020-09-15T06:47:40Z")
The ILM setting refers to primary shard size. The size you show include a replica so the primary shard is probably not 50GB yet as the total size is less than 100GB. ---
**Author:** ![vikramaddagulla](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/vikramaddagulla/32/139858_2.png) [@vikramaddagulla](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/vikramaddagulla)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2020, 7:11am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/applying-ilm-policy-but-data-not-getting-deleted/248605/3 "2020-09-15T07:11:41Z")
Ok....Thanks for the information... Right now, if I refresh the index page, I see an error for the index...The error is as below : `illegal_argument_exception: index name [ohsaccesslogsindex] does not match pattern '^.*-\d+$'` Any action needed for this ? Please note that : I am trying to configure ILM for an already existing old index... ---
**Author:** ![Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/christian_dahlqvist/32/4617_2.png) [@Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Christian_Dahlqvist)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2020, 7:36am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/applying-ilm-policy-but-data-not-getting-deleted/248605/4 "2020-09-15T07:36:35Z")
The index the error is referring to does not seem to be a time-based one. ILM deletes complete indices so is usually used with time-based indices. ---
**Author:** ![vikramaddagulla](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/vikramaddagulla/32/139858_2.png) [@vikramaddagulla](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/vikramaddagulla)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2020, 7:53am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/applying-ilm-policy-but-data-not-getting-deleted/248605/5 "2020-09-15T07:53:08Z")
Ok...Does it mean I cannot apply ILM policies to a non-time based index ? If yes, how can I proceed if I want to delete data from a non-time based index ? ---
**Author:** ![Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/christian_dahlqvist/32/4617_2.png) [@Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Christian_Dahlqvist)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2020, 8:03am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/applying-ilm-policy-but-data-not-getting-deleted/248605/6 "2020-09-15T08:03:03Z")
You will need to set up and trigger delete by query operations yourself periodically. ---
**Author:** ![vikramaddagulla](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/vikramaddagulla/32/139858_2.png) [@vikramaddagulla](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/vikramaddagulla)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2020, 8:58am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/applying-ilm-policy-but-data-not-getting-deleted/248605/7 "2020-09-15T08:58:50Z")
Ok...Thanks...I was under an assumption that ILM can be applied to non-time based indices... Could you please share some documentation on how to set up the trigger and delete the data based on custom requirements...?? Thanks in advance... ---
**Author:** ![Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/christian_dahlqvist/32/4617_2.png) [@Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Christian_Dahlqvist)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2020, 9:02am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/applying-ilm-policy-but-data-not-getting-deleted/248605/8 "2020-09-15T09:02:03Z")
One way is to create a script that is triggered from from. I do not know of any docs showing this. ---
**Author:** ![vikramaddagulla](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/vikramaddagulla/32/139858_2.png) [@vikramaddagulla](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/vikramaddagulla)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2020, 9:05am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/applying-ilm-policy-but-data-not-getting-deleted/248605/9 "2020-09-15T09:05:39Z")
I had seem couple of blogs and came across the below which will delete eveything older than 2016-02-29 Could you please confirm if this would work or if any changes to be made to this ? ```auto DELETE index_name/_query { "query": { "filtered": { "query": { "query_string": { "query": "*" } }, "filter": { "range": { "@timestamp": { "lte": "2016-02-29" } } } } } } ``` ---
**Author:** ![vikramaddagulla](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/vikramaddagulla/32/139858_2.png) [@vikramaddagulla](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/vikramaddagulla)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2020, 2:52am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/applying-ilm-policy-but-data-not-getting-deleted/248605/10 "2020-09-20T02:52:01Z")
Hello, How do I make sure that my index is a time-series index ? Right now, I configured the logstash output section to create index in a certain way ( for ex : index ==\> "logfileindex" ) This has created the index named logfileindex...But I am unable to apply ILM to this since it is a non-time series based index... How can I convert this index to a time-series based ? If it cannot be converted, how do I create a time-series based index with my current settings ? ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2020, 2:52am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/applying-ilm-policy-but-data-not-getting-deleted/248605/11 "2020-10-18T02:52:05Z")
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