# Help with data management, I have an index with a size of 119GB, what can I do?

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/help-with-data-management-i-have-an-index-with-a-size-of-119gb-what-can-i-do/329866>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [April 12, 2023, 7:07pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/help-with-data-management-i-have-an-index-with-a-size-of-119gb-what-can-i-do/329866 "2023-04-12T19:07:19Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Mary2022](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e8c25b/32.png) [@Mary2022](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Mary2022)\
**Post date:** [April 12, 2023, 7:07pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/help-with-data-management-i-have-an-index-with-a-size-of-119gb-what-can-i-do/329866/1 "2023-04-12T19:07:19Z")

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I have an index with a size of 119GB that is causing performance issues when search the data.

My first thought was to use an index policy to expire old documents but soon I learned the lifecycle policy only works for the new documents of that index, is that right?

I used time series (@timestamp) and I would like to:

1. Delete documents older than 3 months.
2. Break/shrink into 40GB small chunks the data left in the index after expiring the old documents

I don't even know where to start. Help please!!!

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**Author:** ![warkolm](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/warkolm/32/39224_2.png) [@warkolm](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/warkolm)\
**Post date:** [April 17, 2023, 10:00pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/help-with-data-management-i-have-an-index-with-a-size-of-119gb-what-can-i-do/329866/2 "2023-04-17T22:00:36Z")

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ILM works on indices, not on documents. So if you are using time based events/documents, you should use time based indices and then ILM 🙂

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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:** [May 15, 2023, 10:01pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/help-with-data-management-i-have-an-index-with-a-size-of-119gb-what-can-i-do/329866/3 "2023-05-15T22:01:25Z")

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