Briefly, this error occurs when there’s an issue adding an index lifecycle management (ILM) policy to an Elasticsearch index. This could be due to a non-existent policy, incorrect policy name, or insufficient permissions. To resolve this, ensure the ILM policy exists and is correctly named. Also, check the user has the necessary permissions to add a policy. If the issue persists, consider reconfiguring the ILM policy or creating a new one.
Before you begin reading about how to address this log, we recommend you run the Elasticsearch Error Check-Up to resolve this issue and prevent others.
This guide will help you check for common problems that cause the log “adding index lifecycle policy” to appear. It’s important to understand the issues related to it, so to get started, read the general overview on common issues and tips related to the Elasticsearch concepts: index and plugin.
What the index lifecycle policy is
The index lifecycle management (commonly known as ILM) enables you to automate how you want to manage your indices over time. This will take care of automatically managing indices according to various requirements like performance, resilience, deleting old indices and retention requirements.
Refer to this documentation on ILM to learn more about this policy.
How to reproduce this log
To set up index lifecycle policy, you need to define the policy as shown below (change the policy according to your use case).
Create index lifecycle policy:
PUT /_ilm/policy/my_policy
{
"policy": {
"phases": {
"warm": {
"min_age": "10d",
"actions": {
"forcemerge": {
"max_num_segments": 1
}
}
},
"delete": {
"min_age": "20d",
"actions": {
"delete": {}
}
}
}
}
}The log generated will be:
[INFO ][o.e.x.i.a.TransportPutLifecycleAction] adding index lifecycle policy [my_policy]
What this message means
It’s an INFO message letting you know that an index lifecycle management policy is set up. The first step is to define a lifecycle policy so that the index can use this ILM policy to manage its lifecycle. The above request creates a policy called my_policy in Elasticsearch which can be later used to manage the indices. When the policy is created, Elasticsearch will log it as shown above.
Overview
In Elasticsearch, an index (plural: indices) contains a schema and can have one or more shards and replicas. An Elasticsearch index is divided into shards and each shard is an instance of a Lucene index.
Indices are used to store the documents in dedicated data structures corresponding to the data type of fields. For example, text fields are stored inside an inverted index whereas numeric and geo fields are stored inside BKD trees.
Examples
Create index
The following example is based on Elasticsearch version 5.x onwards. An index with two shards, each having one replica will be created with the name test_index1
PUT /test_index1?pretty
{
"settings" : {
"number_of_shards" : 2,
"number_of_replicas" : 1
},
"mappings" : {
"properties" : {
"tags" : { "type" : "keyword" },
"updated_at" : { "type" : "date" }
}
}
}List indices
All the index names and their basic information can be retrieved using the following command:
GET _cat/indices?v
Index a document
Let’s add a document in the index with the command below:
PUT test_index1/_doc/1
{
"tags": [
"opster",
"elasticsearch"
],
"date": "01-01-2020"
}Query an index
GET test_index1/_search
{
"query": {
"match_all": {}
}
}Query multiple indices
It is possible to search multiple indices with a single request. If it is a raw HTTP request, index names should be sent in comma-separated format, as shown in the example below, and in the case of a query via a programming language client such as python or Java, index names are to be sent in a list format.
GET test_index1,test_index2/_search
Delete indices
DELETE test_index1
Common problems
- It is good practice to define the settings and mapping of an Index wherever possible because if this is not done, Elasticsearch tries to automatically guess the data type of fields at the time of indexing. This automatic process may have disadvantages, such as mapping conflicts, duplicate data and incorrect data types being set in the index. If the fields are not known in advance, it’s better to use dynamic index templates.
- Elasticsearch supports wildcard patterns in Index names, which sometimes aids with querying multiple indices, but can also be very destructive too. For example, It is possible to delete all the indices in a single command using the following commands:
DELETE /*
To disable this, you can add the following lines in the elasticsearch.yml:
action.destructive_requires_name: true
Log Context
Log “adding index lifecycle policy [{}]” classname is TransportPutLifecycleAction.java.
We extracted the following from Elasticsearch source code for those seeking an in-depth context :
Instant.now().toEpochMilli()
);
LifecyclePolicyMetadata oldPolicy = newPolicies.put(lifecyclePolicyMetadata.getName(); lifecyclePolicyMetadata);
if (verboseLogging) {
if (oldPolicy == null) {
logger.info("adding index lifecycle policy [{}]"; request.getPolicy().getName());
} else {
logger.info("updating index lifecycle policy [{}]"; request.getPolicy().getName());
}
}
IndexLifecycleMetadata newMetadata = new IndexLifecycleMetadata(newPolicies; currentILMMode(currentState));
