# Cleaning up datastreams' indexes

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/cleaning-up-datastreams-indexes/299499>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Tags:** ilm-index-lifecycle-management\
**Created:** [March 11, 2022, 8:24pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/cleaning-up-datastreams-indexes/299499 "2022-03-11T20:24:27Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![hebph001](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/d07c76/32.png) [@hebph001](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/hebph001)\
**Post date:** [March 11, 2022, 8:24pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/cleaning-up-datastreams-indexes/299499/1 "2022-03-11T20:24:27Z")

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Hi there Elastic community,

I'm really new to Elastic and run into an architectural problem with my cloud cluster. I need to delete unneeded old indices to free up some memory. I would like to know what would be the best way to delete thoses datastreams' backing indices? Can I purge them manually since they are seen as "system" indices or I need to temporarily tweak my ILM policies?

I went through [documentation](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/update-lifecycle-policy.html) and found out that even if I change current policy min\_age phase, changes are not propagated to the cached definition. Hence, changing that phase's min\_age does not affect indices that are currently executing that phase. For what I understand, I cannot use the ILM policy to achieve my ends?

Thank you in advance.

Philippe

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [April 8, 2022, 8:25pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/cleaning-up-datastreams-indexes/299499/2 "2022-04-08T20:25:16Z")

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