# Unable to update ILM policy
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unable-to-update-ilm-policy/199480
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Tags:** ilm-index-lifecycle-management
**Created:** [September 13, 2019, 9:01pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unable-to-update-ilm-policy/199480 "2019-09-13T21:01:25Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@anirudhra10](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/anirudhra10)
#### Post date: [September 13, 2019, 9:01pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unable-to-update-ilm-policy/199480/1 "2019-09-13T21:01:25Z")
Hello,
I have a hot-warm architecture cluster running in production containing 1000+ daily indices spanning 3 months. A single ILM policy moves indices from hot to warm after 4 days of creation, then to cold phase after 30 days and delete phase after 90 days.
Currently all of these indices have this ILM policy applied directly via templates.
Warm phase is configured to move an index from hot nodes to warm nodes. Problem here is that warm nodes are running out of disk space where as hot nodes have ample space left.
Hence I attempted to update the warm phase timing from 4 days to say, 6 days to increase retention on hot nodes. But the cluster doesn't seem to accept this change either via Kibana or via REST API. This could be because there are indices currently executing this phase.
What are my options here apart from deleting old indices or adding more disk?
Any help would be appreciated, thanks!
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### Author:  [@anirudhra10](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/anirudhra10)
#### Post date: [September 18, 2019, 9:59pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unable-to-update-ilm-policy/199480/2 "2019-09-18T21:59:33Z")
Hello team,
Any response would be appreciated!
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### Author:  [@nalbee](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/nalbee)
#### Post date: [October 9, 2019, 9:30pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unable-to-update-ilm-policy/199480/3 "2019-10-09T21:30:04Z")
Hi @anirudhra10. I had this same question. I'll be posting a response shortly.
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### Author:  [@nalbee](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/nalbee)
#### Post date: [October 9, 2019, 9:56pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unable-to-update-ilm-policy/199480/4 "2019-10-09T21:56:21Z")
> [@anirudhra10](#):
>
> But the cluster doesn't seem to accept this change either via Kibana or via REST API. This could be because there are indices currently executing this phase.
You are correct. Per [Lifecycle policy updates | Elasticsearch Guide [8.11] | Elastic](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/update-lifecycle-policy.html), an index keeps a copy of the current phase's policy once it has started executing (or waiting for the condition in your case.)
There is the [ILM explain API](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/ilm-explain-lifecycle.html) end point that I was using to list the version of the policy currently being used for a given index, which can assisted in [troubleshooting](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/index-lifecycle-error-handling.html).
> [@anirudhra10](#):
>
> What are my options here apart from deleting old indices or adding more disk?
Unfortunately, I've got to log off now. I'll come back with some recommendations soon.
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### Author:  [@nalbee](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/nalbee)
#### Post date: [October 10, 2019, 9:18pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unable-to-update-ilm-policy/199480/5 "2019-10-10T21:18:46Z")
Sorry, about the interruption in my response.
> [@anirudhra10](#):
>
> What are my options here apart from deleting old indices or adding more disk?
There are a couple of different options. I have not done this in production but this worked for me the other day in test.
1. [Remove](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/ilm-remove-policy.html) the ILM policy from the indices
2.[Update the settings](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/indices-update-settings.html) on the index to [re-filter](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/shard-allocation-filtering.html) the index shards back to the hot nodes
2. [Add](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/ilm-with-existing-periodic-indices.html) the updated policy to the index
3. Use the [explain](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/index-lifecycle-error-handling.html) [API](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/7.4/ilm-explain-lifecycle.html) to check that the index is back in the hot (aka init) stage and will transition as expected
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2019, 9:18pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unable-to-update-ilm-policy/199480/6 "2019-11-07T21:18:53Z")
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