# Index Lifecycle Management "does not point to index" error

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/index-lifecycle-management-does-not-point-to-index-error/211513>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Tags:** ilm-index-lifecycle-management\
**Created:** [December 11, 2019, 7:01pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/index-lifecycle-management-does-not-point-to-index-error/211513 "2019-12-11T19:01:05Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 3

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jerrac](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/jerrac/32/52980_2.png) [@jerrac](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/jerrac)\
**Post date:** [December 18, 2019, 12:26am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/index-lifecycle-management-does-not-point-to-index-error/211513/3 "2019-12-18T00:26:59Z")

</div>

I removed the aliases from my custom templates, though I'm not clear on why, or what that does.

Also, um, how will this interact with the templates \<file/metric/journal/etc\>beat create?

Each time there a new version of the beat, it creates a new index template for that version. This is something I'm pretty sure I want, since I don't want to manually update mappings and other settings every time I upgrade my beats...

The beats also create new version and date based indices each day. Like `filebeat-7.3.2-2019.11.06`.

Will this template make the version and date based indices get rolled into filebeat-0000N after 30 days?

```auto
PUT _template/filebeat-lane-custom
{
  "index_patterns": [
    "filebeat-*"
  ],
  "settings": {
    "index": {
      "lifecycle": {
        "name": "filebeat-lane-custom",
        "rollover_alias": "filebeat"
      }
    }
  }
}

```

Or will the version/date based indices require a version/date based rollover? Like `filebeat-7.4.2-2019.11.27-000001`?

That seems to be what this error is indicating:

```auto
illegal_argument_exception: index.lifecycle.rollover_alias [filebeat] does not point to index [filebeat-7.4.2-2019.11.27]

```

Which all makes me think I need to be telling beats to use the beat-00000N indices in the first place, but how do they know which one to use? And what happens if I end up with beat version 7.5.0 on one server, and beat version 7.6.0 on another?

Ok, all that makes me think I need to get a better handle on how indices actually work. So I'm going to sleep on it and find time tomorrow to read the docs. Any pointers in the meantime would be appreciated. 🙂

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