# Heartbeat - Setting a custom ILM policy

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/heartbeat-setting-a-custom-ilm-policy/202346>\
**Category:** Beats\
**Created:** [October 4, 2019, 1:13pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/heartbeat-setting-a-custom-ilm-policy/202346 "2019-10-04T13:13:25Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![AlessandroKP](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/alessandrokp/32/45312_2.png) [@AlessandroKP](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/AlessandroKP)\
**Post date:** [October 4, 2019, 1:13pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/heartbeat-setting-a-custom-ilm-policy/202346/1 "2019-10-04T13:13:25Z")

</div>

Hi all,

I'm having some problems trying to set the ILM policy of heartbeat indices.  
I'm running heartbeat with the following configuration (heartbeat.yml):

```
heartbeat.config.monitors:
  path: ${path.config}/monitors.d/*.yml
  reload.enabled: true
  reload.period: 5s

setup.template.settings:
  index.number_of_shards: 1
  index.index.number_of_replicas: 0
  index.codec: best_compression

output.elasticsearch:
  hosts: ["localhost:9200"]

processors:
  - add_host_metadata: ~

setup.ilm.enabled: true
setup.ilm.rollover_alias: "heartbeat"
setup.ilm.pattern: "{now/d}-000001" 
setup.ilm.policy.name: "custom_policy"
setup.ilm.policy.file: "/<path-to-file>/policy.json"
setup.ilm.overwrite: true

```

I'm using a custom ilm policy which is provided to heartbeat by file. This is the content of policy.json

```
{
  "policy": {
    "phases": {
      "delete": {
        "min_age": "1d",
        "actions": {
          "delete": {} 
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

```

Now, when I launch heartbeat I get the following messages in the heartbeat logs

```
INFO [index-management] idxmgmt/std.go:252 Auto ILM enable success.
INFO [index-management.ilm] ilm/std.go:134 do not generate ilm policy: exists=true, overwrite=false
INFO [index-management] idxmgmt/std.go:265 ILM policy successfully loaded.
INFO [index-management] idxmgmt/std.go:394 Set setup.template.name to '{heartbeat-7.3.1 {now/d}-000001}' as ILM is enabled.
INFO [index-management] idxmgmt/std.go:399 Set setup.template.pattern to 'heartbeat-7.3.1-*' as ILM is enabled.
INFO [index-management] idxmgmt/std.go:433 Set settings.index.lifecycle.rollover_alias in template to {heartbeat-7.3.1 {now/d}-000001} as ILM is enabled.
INFO [index-management] idxmgmt/std.go:437 Set settings.index.lifecycle.name in template to {heartbeat-7.3.1 {"policy":{"phases":{"hot":{"actions":{"rollover":{"max_age":"30d","max_size":"50gb"}}}}}}} as ILM is enabled.
INFO template/load.go:88 Template heartbeat-7.3.1 already exists and will not be overwritten.
INFO [index-management] idxmgmt/std.go:289 Loaded index template.
INFO [index-management] idxmgmt/std.go:300 Write alias successfully generated.

```

As you can see, it says that a template already exists (the default heartbeat template) and that it will not be overwritten.  
It seems like it has not updated the default ILM policy.

In fact, if I check the ilm policy through the \_ilm/explain endpoint

`GET heartbeat*/_ilm/explain`

I get the response:

```
{
  "indices" : {
    "heartbeat-7.3.1-2019.10.04-000001" : {
      "index" : "heartbeat-7.3.1-2019.10.04-000001",
      "managed" : true,
      "policy" : "heartbeat-7.3.1",
      "lifecycle_date_millis" : 1570188426186,
      "phase" : "hot",
      "phase_time_millis" : 1570188426236,
      "action" : "complete",
      "action_time_millis" : 1570188426220,
      "step" : "complete",
      "step_time_millis" : 1570188426236,
      "phase_execution" : {
        "policy" : "heartbeat-7.3.1",
        "phase_definition" : {
          "min_age" : "0ms",
          "actions" : { }
        },
        "version" : 5,
        "modified_date_in_millis" : 1570188387183
      }
    }
  }
}

```

which is not the ilm policy I defined, but the default one.

However I explicitly set the property `setup.ilm.overwrite: true` in the configuration file, so I don't understand why it doesn't change the ilm policy in the index settings.

Am I doing something wrong?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [November 1, 2019, 3:13pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/heartbeat-setting-a-custom-ilm-policy/202346/2 "2019-11-01T15:13:25Z")

</div>

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