What is the use of advanced settings of previous kibana versions under saved objects of kibana 7.8.0?

[shivani_aggarwal (Shivani)]

Hi,

I was using ELK 6.6.1 stack in k8s environment (having some index patterns saved in kibana index - .kibana_1) and then upgraded to 7.0.1 (oss) stack. Due to this, the saved objects got migrated to .kibana_2.
Some new index patterns were then created & saved in 7.0.1 too.
Now, I have upgraded to 7.8.0 stack, which has migrated the saved objects to a new index .kibana_3.

$ curl https://10.254.97.161:9200/_cat/indices?v -k -uadmin:admin | grep kibana
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
100 2337 100 2337 0 0 12867 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 12840
green open .kibana_2 wwMZtDlESc65GXw5idkmHA 1 0 5 1 24.1kb 24.1kb
green open .kibana_1 LRIdE8auTKqUOHoQuubK7Q 1 0 3 0 21.5kb 21.5kb
green open .kibana_3 DpjVMn2FQoSITalOPbzY5Q 1 0 14 1 47.1kb 47.1kb

$ curl https://10.254.97.161:9200/_cat/aliases?v -k -uadmin:admin
alias index filter routing.index routing.search is_write_index
.kibana .kibana_3 - - - -

Now, upon logging into kibana (7.8.0) UI, under saved objects at http://ip:5601/app/kibana#/management/kibana/objects, apart from the index-patterns created by me previously, I can also see 3 additional objects as - Advanced Settings [version]

Can someone help me understand the use of these saved objects here because the advanced settings for kibana can be modified at /app/kibana#/management/kibana/settings directly.

Also, is it right to have these additional objects of previous versions too (ex 6.6.1, 7.0.1 in my case) and what would be the impact of modifying/deleting these objects here?

Thanks!

[joshdover]

@shivani_aggarwal

Can someone help me understand the use of these saved objects here because the advanced settings for kibana can be modified at /app/kibana#/management/kibana/settings directly.

These are available in the Saved Objects UI in order to support exporting these settings to other spaces and/or Kibana deployments. This is the same data that the Advanced Settings UI operates on as well.

@shivani_aggarwal

Also, is it right to have these additional objects of previous versions too (ex 6.6.1, 7.0.1 in my case) and what would be the impact of modifying/deleting these objects here?

We currently keep these around to assist in debugging failed upgrades. You should be safe to delete these without any issues. Only the version that corresponds to your current version are actually in-use by Kibana.

[shivani_aggarwal (Shivani)]

Thanks for the clarification @joshdover.
Infact, on clicking any of the advanced settings saved object, it always redirects to /app/kibana#/management/kibana/settings page only and thus reflects the latest settings corresponding to the current version.
On exporting the saved objects to a json, I could differentiate between advanced settings of different versions. This, as you said, can help in case of failed upgrades.