elasticsearch/docs/reference/monitoring/indices.asciidoc

[role="xpack"]
[[config-monitoring-indices]]
== Configuring indices for monitoring

Sometimes the default index settings might not work for your situation. For
example, you might want to change index lifecycle management (ILM) settings,
add custom mappings, or set the number of shards and replicas
for the monitoring indices.

You can change the default behavior. The steps you follow depend on which data
collection method is used.

[float]
=== Configuring data streams created by {agent}

{agent} uses data streams to store time series data across multiple indices
while giving you a single named resource for requests. You can alter the
settings of each dataset by configuring an `@custom` component template.
For more information, refer to {fleet-guide}/data-streams.html[Data streams].

[float]
=== Configuring indices created by {metricbeat}

<<indices-templates-v1,Index templates>> are used to configure the indices that
store the monitoring data that {metricbeat} collects from a cluster.

You can retrieve the templates through the `_template` API:

[source,console]
----------------------------------
GET /_index_template/.monitoring-es-mb*
----------------------------------

By default, the template configures one shard and one replica for the
monitoring indices. To override the default settings, add your own template:

. Set `index_patterns` to match existing `.monitoring-{product}-8-*` indices.
. Set the template `priority` to `1`. This ensures your template is
applied after the default template, which has an priority of 0.
. Specify the `number_of_shards` and/or `number_of_replicas` in the `settings`
section.

For example, the following template increases the number of shards to five
and the number of replicas to two.

[source,console]
----------------------------------
PUT /_index_template/custom_monitoring
{
  "index_patterns": [
  ".monitoring-beats-8-*",
  ".monitoring-es-8-*",
  ".monitoring-kibana-8-*",
  ".monitoring-logstash-8-*",
  ".monitoring-ent-search-8-*"
  ],
  "priority": 1,
  "template": {
    "settings": {
      "number_of_shards": 5,
      "number_of_replicas": 2
    }
  } 
}
----------------------------------

//////////////////////////

[source,console]
--------------------------------------------------
DELETE /_index_template/custom_monitoring
--------------------------------------------------
// TEST[continued]

//////////////////////////

IMPORTANT: Only set the `number_of_shards` and `number_of_replicas` in the
settings section. Overriding other monitoring template settings could cause
your monitoring dashboards to stop working correctly.