All Products
Search
Document Center

Elasticsearch:Index lifecycle management

Last Updated:Jun 16, 2026

Index lifecycle management (ILM) automates index operations such as rollover, retention, and deletion in Alibaba Cloud Elasticsearch.

ILM phases

ILM defines the following index phases:

  • Hot: Handles newly indexed data. Hot nodes are fast, high-performance, and resource-intensive.

  • Warm: Stores aging data that is queried less frequently. Warm nodes are optimized for storage capacity and cost-effectiveness.

  • Cold: Holds rarely accessed data on low-cost, slow storage.

  • Delete: Data is automatically removed after its retention period.

An index lifecycle policy defines the actions to perform in each phase and when to transition indices between phases.

ILM actions

See Index lifecycle in Elasticsearch documentation.