# Reduce (shrink) primary shards on older data indices of a data stream
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/reduce-shrink-primary-shards-on-older-data-indices-of-a-data-stream/293963
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Tags:** ilm-index-lifecycle-management, reindex, datastreams
**Created:** [January 11, 2022, 2:27am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/reduce-shrink-primary-shards-on-older-data-indices-of-a-data-stream/293963 "2022-01-11T02:27:57Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@adriaan](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/adriaan)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2022, 2:27am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/reduce-shrink-primary-shards-on-older-data-indices-of-a-data-stream/293963/1 "2022-01-11T02:27:57Z")
I have a data stream with page views of multiple websites of customers. I allow customers to delete their data (this is important). When they do I remove all the documents with a certain hostname.
At the same time, I want to keep my search of recent data fast. What works best is having 12 primary shards of recent data. Older data is fine with 3 shards (both on a 3 node cluster).
The most recent data (not older than 1 day) will also be updated with a few extra metrics we collect at the end of the page views (like time on page).
A few options (and their concerns):
- The [shrink API](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/ilm-shrink.html) but it is creating read-only indices (I need to be able to delete old but specific data)
- Make the data stream writable once every month and run the deletions then (is that possible?)
- Reindex the whole data stream every month to remove the older documents (how to keep writes and updates in the last month working well?)
What would be a way to make the recent data fast in a data stream that sometimes gets updates (in very old data).
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2022, 2:28am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/reduce-shrink-primary-shards-on-older-data-indices-of-a-data-stream/293963/2 "2022-02-08T02:28:48Z")
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