Index life cycle policy to delete indices

Elastic Stack Elasticsearch
1

Hi, I created below policy to delete old indices. I notice that old indices are getting deleted but slowly . Meaning the count went down from 695 to 573 in 1 hour. Is it normal?

PUT _ilm/policy/QA_only_cleanup_old_indices
{
  "policy": {
    "phases": {
      "hot": {
        "min_age": "0ms",
        "actions": {
          "set_priority": {
            "priority": 100
          }
        }
      },
      "delete": {
        "min_age": "3d",
        "actions": {
          "delete": {
            "delete_searchable_snapshot": true
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}
2

Welcome to our community! :smiley:

I know ILM runs every 10 minutes by default. I am not sure if it has internal limits around how many actions it'll take as a result of that run.

1 Like
3

One thing I noticed that even though indices are getting purged I still see indices older than 3 days.
We have date as creation.date.string.
Here is the query I am using to get all indices:
GET _cat/indices/catalog_1*?v&h=h,s,i,id,p,r,dc,dd,ss,creation.date.string&s=creation.date:desc
Wondering what changes needed to the above policy I posted few days back to make it work.

Example indices which are older than 3 days:

green open catalog_1_7f64fbab-6797-4047-ac79-f50a5945ba9b_test_upaj73nx_202203080206_40dbefde 6Ano0zH-QsW7PqjEyob4oA 1 2   1171    0   1.3mb 2022-03-08T02:07:32.222Z
green open catalog_1_7f64fbab-6797-4047-ac79-f50a5945ba9b_test_sha2nvq4_202203072005_4a4bc593 oh7movLcTwyWMpgoMQNFgA 1 2   1171    0   1.3mb 2022-03-07T20:07:26.270Z

Here is the explain for one of the indices:

{
  "indices" : {
    "catalog_1_7f64fbab-6797-4047-ac79-f50a5945ba9b_test_sha2nvq4_202203072005_4a4bc593" : {
      "index" : "catalog_1_7f64fbab-6797-4047-ac79-f50a5945ba9b_test_sha2nvq4_202203072005_4a4bc593",
      "managed" : false
    }
  }
}

Here is Elasticsearch cloud version we are using:

{
  "name" : "<xyz>",
  "cluster_name" : "<xuz>",
  "cluster_uuid" : "<xyz>",
  "version" : {
    "number" : "8.0.0",
    "build_flavor" : "default",
    "build_type" : "docker",
    "build_hash" : "<xyz>",
    "build_date" : "2022-02-03T16:47:57.507843096Z",
    "build_snapshot" : false,
    "lucene_version" : "9.0.0",
    "minimum_wire_compatibility_version" : "7.17.0",
    "minimum_index_compatibility_version" : "7.0.0"
  },
  "tagline" : "You Know, for Search"
}
4

What does your policy look like?

5

Policy I mentioned at the beginning of this thread.

6

Ahh yes, sorry about that.

What does an _explain on the policy return.

7

_explain is returning something similar to below one but for all indices.
Also I am wondering if there a way to put index paterrn like catalog* to apply the ILM policy to specific indices?

{
  "indices" : {
    "catalog_1_7f64fbab-6797-4047-ac79-f50a5945ba9b_test_sha2nvq4_202203072005_4a4bc593" : {
      "index" : "catalog_1_7f64fbab-6797-4047-ac79-f50a5945ba9b_test_sha2nvq4_202203072005_4a4bc593",
      "managed" : false
    }
  }
}
8

Do we need to create index templates?

9

Appreciate any pointers on this issue.

10

Hello,

I was informed that indicies created before the policy created won't be deleted automatically. Which is fine.
However even the indices created after the policy is created also NOT getting deleted. Any dea?

-Tej

11

That indicates that it has no policy attached to the index, so it won't be deleted.

What does your template that should be implementing the policy look like?

12

Hi Mark,

Thanks for the reply. I am not aware of the step. Looking at some other thread I found that after creating policy I need to add below two steps to attach the policy to indexes starting with the name catalog
Are these steps sufficient? Is there a clear documentation on this process. I could not find one.

Also, I just added below two yesterday. Does it mean indexes created earlier won't use the policy but only newly created indexes? I ask because I do not see old indices getting purged.

How often the policy run to purge indices once its started working as expected?

PUT /catalog*/_settings?pretty
{
  "lifecycle.name": "QA_only_cleanup_old_indices"
}

PUT /_template/cleanup_policy_template?pretty
{
"index_patterns": ["catalog*"], "settings": { "index.lifecycle.name": "QA_only_cleanup_old_indices" }
}
13

This is what explain produced on one of the indices after applying above 2 commands. Indices matching are still not purged yet. Wondering if there is a time frequency when policy runs to purge these??

  "indices" : {
    "catalog_1_3f73a49a-3137-472c-xyz" : {
      "index" : "catalog_1_3f73a49a-3137-472c-xyz",
      "managed" : true,
      "policy" : "QA_only_cleanup_old_indices",
      "lifecycle_date" : "2022-03-28T06:01:05.754Z",
      "lifecycle_date_millis" : 1648447265754,
      "age" : "4.45d",
      "phase" : "delete",
      "phase_time" : "2022-04-01T16:45:34.206Z",
      "phase_time_millis" : 1648831534206,
      "action" : "delete",
      "action_time" : "2022-04-01T16:45:34.206Z",
      "action_time_millis" : 1648831534206,
      "step" : "wait-for-shard-history-leases",
      "step_time" : "2022-04-01T16:45:34.206Z",
      "step_time_millis" : 1648831534206,
      "phase_execution" : {
        "policy" : "QA_only_cleanup_old_indices",
        "phase_definition" : {
          "min_age" : "3d",
          "actions" : {
            "delete" : {
              "delete_searchable_snapshot" : true
            }
          }
        },
        "version" : 2,
        "modified_date" : "2022-03-24T23:26:17.724Z",
        "modified_date_in_millis" : 1648164377724
      }
    },
14

I see that old indices are getting deleted after attach the indices using above command.

What is the need for _template command?
I get below message after applying on the cluster

PUT /_template/cleanup_policy_template?pretty
{
"index_patterns": ["catalog_1_priya*"], "settings": { "index.lifecycle.name": "test_cleanup" }
}
#! Legacy index templates are deprecated in favor of composable templates.
{
  "acknowledged" : true
}
15

Manage existing indices | Elasticsearch Guide [8.1] | Elastic applies here. But yes, you need to explicitly add those as per Configure a lifecycle policy | Elasticsearch Guide [8.1] | Elastic

Every 10 minutes by default.

1 Like
16

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