Start and stop index lifecycle management

Stack

Follow these steps to check the current ILM status, and to stop or restart it as needed.

To see the current status of the ILM service, use the ILM status API:

				GET _ilm/status
		

Under normal operation, the response shows ILM is RUNNING:

{
  "operation_mode": "RUNNING"
}
		

You can also View the lifecycle status of an index or data stream for further information.

By default, the index lifecycle management service is in the RUNNING state and manages all indices that have lifecycle policies.

You can stop ILM to suspend management operations for all indices. For example, you might stop index lifecycle management when performing scheduled maintenance or making changes to the cluster that could impact the execution of ILM actions.

To stop the ILM service and pause execution of all lifecycle policies, use the ILM stop API:

				POST _ilm/stop
		

The response will look like this:

{
  "acknowledged": true
}
		

The ILM service runs all policies to a point where it is safe to stop.

While the ILM service is shutting down, run the status API to verify that ILM is stopping:

				GET _ilm/status
		

The response will look like this:

{
  "operation_mode": "STOPPING"
}
		

Once all policies are at a safe stopping point, ILM moves into the STOPPED mode:

{
  "operation_mode": "STOPPED"
}
		

If the automatic index lifecycle management or snapshot lifecycle management service is not working, you might need to restart the service.

To restart ILM and resume executing policies, use the ILM start API. This puts the ILM service in the RUNNING state and ILM begins executing policies from where it left off.

				POST _ilm/start
		

The response will look like this:

{
  "acknowledged": true
}
		

Verify that index lifecycle management is now running:

				GET _ilm/status
		

The response will look like this:

{
  "operation_mode": "RUNNING"
}