How is the removal of outdated indexes in Elasticsearch performed?

In Elasticsearch, the removal of outdated indices is usually automated, for example, through Index Lifecycle Management (ILM) or scripts.

Main methods:

• Index Lifecycle Management (ILM): allows configuring index lifecycle policies, including hot, warm, cold, and delete phases. In the delete phase, conditions can be set for automatic index deletion (e.g., by age or size).

• Curator: an official tool for index management that allows creating tasks to delete indices based on templates, creation date, and other criteria.

• Manual deletion: using the Elasticsearch API, an index can be deleted with the command:

DELETE /index_name

Example of using ILM to delete indices older than 30 days:

{
  "policy": {
    "phases": {
      "delete": {
        "min_age": "30d",
        "actions": {
          "delete": {}
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Thus, outdated indices are deleted automatically or manually to free resources and maintain cluster performance.