Removing old indices in elasticsearch

If you are using elasticsearch version 5.x then you need to install the curator version 4.x. You can see the version compatibility and installation steps from the documentation

Once installed. Then just run the command

curator --config path/config_file.yml [--dry-run] path/action_file.yml

Curator provides a dry-run flag to just output what Curator would have executed. Output will be in your log file which you have defined in config.yml file. If not logging key defined in config_file.yml then currator will output to console. To delete the indices run the above command without --dry-run flag

The configuration file config_file.yml is

---
client:
  hosts:
   - 127.0.0.1
  port: 9200
logging:
  loglevel: INFO
  logfile: "/root/curator/logs/actions.log"
  logformat: default
  blacklist: ['elasticsearch', 'urllib3']

The action file action_file.yml is

---
actions:
  1:
    action: delete_indices
    description: >-
      Delete indices older than 7 days (based on index name), for logstash-
      prefixed indices. Ignore the error if the filter does not result in an
      actionable list of indices (ignore_empty_list) and exit cleanly.
    options:
      ignore_empty_list: True
      timeout_override:
      continue_if_exception: False
      disable_action: False
    filters:
    - filtertype: pattern
      kind: prefix
      value: logstash-
      exclude:
    - filtertype: age
      source: name
      direction: older
      timestring: '%Y.%m.%d'
      unit: days
      unit_count: 7
      exclude:

If you want to delete the indices weekly, monthly, etc automatically. Then just write the bash script like

#!/bin/bash
# Script to delete the log event indices of the elasticsearch weekly

#This will delete the indices of the last 7 days
curator --config /path/config_file.yml /path/action_file.yml

Put a shell script in one of these folders: /etc/cron.daily, /etc/cron.hourly, /etc/cron.monthly or /etc/cron.weekly and your job is done.

NOTE: Make sure to use the correct indentation in your configuration and action files. Otherwise it will not work.

Curator would be an ideal match here. You can find the link here - https://github.com/elastic/curator

A command like below should work just fine -

curator --host <IP> delete indices --older-than 30 --prefix "twitter-" --time-unit days  --timestring '%Y-%m-%d'

You can keep in this in the CRON for removing the indices occasionally.

You can find some examples and docs here - https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/client/curator/current/examples.html