# .monitoring-es indexes blow up, have no policies associated? **URL:** \ **Category:** Elasticsearch\ **Created:** [August 29, 2022, 3:39pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/monitoring-es-indexes-blow-up-have-no-policies-associated/313186 "2022-08-29T15:39:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![wrobitza\_aveq](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/wrobitza_aveq/32/105113_2.png) [@wrobitza\_aveq](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/wrobitza_aveq)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2022, 3:39pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/monitoring-es-indexes-blow-up-have-no-policies-associated/313186/1 "2022-08-29T15:39:21Z")
I've enabled Stack Monitoring in Kibana, just for the purpose of trying it out. Now, after a couple of days, I see that my stack is using a lot of disk memory. I was able to delete the individual `.es-monitoring*` indices that used up this space, but I would like to modify the policy that creates them in the first place, so that they are only kept for one day or 1GB at most. What I see from [this topic](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/huge-monitoring-es-indexes/285102/10) is not really helpful; it says I can safely delete these indices. But I don't want to do that manually. I also notice that for APM, for instance, there are index lifecycle policies that I can modify, but for monitoring, I don't see any. What can I do to prevent these large indices? ---
**Author:** ![stephenb](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/stephenb/32/40856_2.png) [@stephenb](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/stephenb)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2022, 3:48pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/monitoring-es-indexes-blow-up-have-no-policies-associated/313186/2 "2022-08-29T15:48:12Z")
HI @wrobitza_aveq Welcome to the community > [@wrobitza\_aveq](#): > > I've enabled Stack Monitoring in Kibana, just for the purpose of trying it out. Now, after a couple of days, I see that my stack is using a lot of disk memory. Is this Self Managed or in Elastic Cloud If Self Managed How did you do enable monitoring / Which Method? Metricbeat / Self Monitoring? And how did you determine that ILM is not enabled for those indices? (just validating) ---
**Author:** ![wrobitza\_aveq](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/wrobitza_aveq/32/105113_2.png) [@wrobitza\_aveq](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/wrobitza_aveq)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2022, 4:27pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/monitoring-es-indexes-blow-up-have-no-policies-associated/313186/3 "2022-08-29T16:27:08Z")
This is self-managed. I enabled it by going to Management » Stack Monitoring and following the GUI wizard there. There are no ILM policies visible when I click on the index in Index Management. Other indices like the ones from APM (e.g., traces) show the ILM policies. ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/9/2/92e86023b89523373a37e6db138588f8dc165f71.png) ---
**Author:** ![stephenb](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/stephenb/32/40856_2.png) [@stephenb](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/stephenb)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2022, 4:44pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/monitoring-es-indexes-blow-up-have-no-policies-associated/313186/4 "2022-08-29T16:44:39Z")
> [@wrobitza\_aveq](#): > > This is self-managed. I enabled it by going to Management » Stack Monitoring and following the GUI wizard there. That is the issue... "Self Monitoring" Will be deprecated at some point / soon (this is part of the reason why 🙂 ), it is just the "quick" way to set up monitoring. If you had used metricbeat etc... then there would be policies... although metricbeat take a bit more work but then it is like any other index and it will have an ILM policy etc. There is no simple why to add ILM to those indices... ---
**Author:** ![wrobitza\_aveq](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/wrobitza_aveq/32/105113_2.png) [@wrobitza\_aveq](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/wrobitza_aveq)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2022, 5:30pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/monitoring-es-indexes-blow-up-have-no-policies-associated/313186/5 "2022-08-29T17:30:34Z")
That's good to know. I didn't notice that when enabling the feature a week ago. Maybe the deprectation message needs to be more prominent? In any case, I ran: ```auto PUT /_cluster/settings { "persistent": { "xpack.monitoring.elasticsearch.collection.enabled": false } } ``` and: ```auto PUT /_cluster/settings { "persistent": { "xpack.monitoring.collection.enabled": false } } ``` and stopped monitoring for now. ---
**Author:** ![stephenb](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/stephenb/32/40856_2.png) [@stephenb](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/stephenb)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2022, 5:42pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/monitoring-es-indexes-blow-up-have-no-policies-associated/313186/6 "2022-08-29T17:42:07Z")
Yes perhaps... I think it is in the GUI and the [Docs](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/collecting-monitoring-data.html) pretty prominently. Not sure what version you are on but I got the deprecation warning with the setting ```auto PUT /_cluster/settings { "persistent": { "xpack.monitoring.collection.enabled": true } } #! [xpack.monitoring.collection.enabled] setting was deprecated in Elasticsearch and will be removed in a future release. { "acknowledged": true, "persistent": { "xpack": { "monitoring": { "collection": { "enabled": "true" } } } }, "transient": {} } ``` ---
**Author:** ![wrobitza\_aveq](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/wrobitza_aveq/32/105113_2.png) [@wrobitza\_aveq](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/wrobitza_aveq)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2022, 5:55pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/monitoring-es-indexes-blow-up-have-no-policies-associated/313186/7 "2022-08-29T17:55:41Z")
> Yes perhaps... I think it is in the GUI and the [Docs](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/collecting-monitoring-data.html) pretty prominently. Indeed. In contrast to Legacy APM (standalone server) though, the ILM policies are not present, which caused the whole confusion from my side. And I did get the same messages on 8.3.3 running these commands! So I guess I will check out Metricbeat in the future. Thanks for your quick help! ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2022, 5:56pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/monitoring-es-indexes-blow-up-have-no-policies-associated/313186/8 "2022-09-26T17:56:03Z")
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