Index policies

A policy is a set of rules that describes how to manage an index. To work with polocies, you can use the OpenSearch Index State Management (ISM) plugin.

In a policy, you define:

• States an index can be in. You can specify any names for states. Every policy must have at least one state.
• Actions to perform when an index gets into a certain state. Actions are performed in their given order.
• Conditions to move an index to a different state (transitions). Transitions are checked in their given order.

For example, you can define a policy that changes your index state to read_only after 30 days and deletes it after 90 days. You can also configure a policy that sends notifications when an index is deleted.

Every policy must have at least one state. Actions and transitions are optional. If you do not specify conditions for a transition, an index is moved to another state by default at the time of verification.

Once a policy is created and attached to an index, the ISM plugin creates a job that checks the conditions for index transitions and performs the policy actions. By default, a job runs every 5 minutes.

For more information about policies, see the OpenSearch documentation.