# Snapshot deletion using curator utility vs traditional way

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/snapshot-deletion-using-curator-utility-vs-traditional-way/47375>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [April 14, 2016, 11:29am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/snapshot-deletion-using-curator-utility-vs-traditional-way/47375 "2016-04-14T11:29:20Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![vbondalapati](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/e274bd/32.png) [@vbondalapati](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/vbondalapati)\
**Post date:** [April 14, 2016, 11:29am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/snapshot-deletion-using-curator-utility-vs-traditional-way/47375/1 "2016-04-14T11:29:20Z")

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Need Experts thoughts on below ..........

When we try to delete snapshot using traditional way its taking around 3 hours and we are having around 2k snapshots and it takes ages to house keep snapshots.

I came across curator utility to delete snapshots and would like to know if curator utility does snapshot deletion quicker when compared to traditional way- we don't have required test environments to compare and need some guidance.

Traditional way of deleting snapshots  
curl --fail -XDELETE '[http://localhost:9200/\_snapshot/repo1/snapshot2?pretty=true](http://localhost:9200/_snapshot/repo1/snapshot2?pretty=true)'

Curator way  
curator delete snapshots --regex 'snapshot1' --repository repo1

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**Author:** ![spinscale](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/spinscale/32/25011_2.png) [@spinscale](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/spinscale)\
**Post date:** [April 14, 2016, 1:05pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/snapshot-deletion-using-curator-utility-vs-traditional-way/47375/2 "2016-04-14T13:05:21Z")

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Hey,

curator is just a helper tool, it is also just calling the delete snapshot api, as you can see [here](https://github.com/elastic/curator/blob/master/curator/api/snapshot.py#L104-L127)

No magic involved 🙂

Might make more sense to check out the I/O of your system and why it is so slow.

--Alex

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**Author:** ![vbondalapati](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/e274bd/32.png) [@vbondalapati](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/vbondalapati)\
**Post date:** [April 14, 2016, 1:44pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/snapshot-deletion-using-curator-utility-vs-traditional-way/47375/3 "2016-04-14T13:44:02Z")

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Many Thanks ALex for quick turnaround - i will park curator for now...

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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:** [July 5, 2017, 10:59pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/snapshot-deletion-using-curator-utility-vs-traditional-way/47375/4 "2017-07-05T22:59:15Z")

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