# ISM Policy Update Not Reflected on Older Managed Indices After Replica Count Change

**URL:** <https://forum.opensearch.org/t/ism-policy-update-not-reflected-on-older-managed-indices-after-replica-count-change/28115>\
**Category:** Index Management\
**Tags:** index-management\
**Created:** [June 7, 2026, 4:59am UTC](https://forum.opensearch.org/t/ism-policy-update-not-reflected-on-older-managed-indices-after-replica-count-change/28115 "2026-06-07T04:59:20Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Jijo.john](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b3f665/32.png) [@Jijo.john](https://forum.opensearch.org/u/Jijo.john)\
**Post date:** [June 7, 2026, 4:59am UTC](https://forum.opensearch.org/t/ism-policy-update-not-reflected-on-older-managed-indices-after-replica-count-change/28115/1 "2026-06-07T04:59:20Z")

</div>

**Versions** (relevant - OpenSearch/Dashboard/Server OS/Browser): 3.6.0

**Describe the issue** :

I have an Index State Management (ISM) policy that manages index lifecycle across Hot, Snapshot, Warm, and Delete states.

Originally, the policy was configured to set `number_of_replicas: 2` when an index transitioned to the Warm state. After the policy had already been managing indices for some time, Then i updated the policy and changed the Warm state replica to 0

```json
"replica_count": {
  "number_of_replicas": 0
}

```

The policy update was successfully saved and the current policy definition reflects the new value.

However, I observed that some older managed indices continued to behave as if they were using the previous policy version, while newer indices appeared to use the updated policy.

Current policy metadata:

```json
"_seq_no": 239501,
"_primary_term": 16

```

Warm state action:

```json
{
  "name": "warm",
  "actions": [
    {
      "allocation": {
        "require": {
          "temp": "warm"
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "replica_count": {
        "number_of_replicas": 0
      }
    }
  ]
}

```

### What I Observed

For an older managed index:

```auto
GET _plugins/_ism/explain/prod-trx-logs-2026.05.22

```

The response shows:

```json
{
  "policy_id": "hot-warm-policy",
  "policy_seq_no": 91125,
  "policy_primary_term": 1,
  "state": {
    "name": "warm"
  }
}

```

The policy sequence number associated with the index is significantly older than the current policy sequence number.

For newer indices managed by the same policy, the reported:

```json
"policy_seq_no"

```

matches the currentt policy version:

```json
239501

```

Is this an expected behaviour ?

thanks,

Jijo

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![pablo](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.opensearch.org/pablo/32/10363_2.png) [@pablo](https://forum.opensearch.org/u/pablo)\
**Post date:** [June 8, 2026, 7:10am UTC](https://forum.opensearch.org/t/ism-policy-update-not-reflected-on-older-managed-indices-after-replica-count-change/28115/2 "2026-06-08T07:10:01Z")

</div>

> [@Jijo.john](#):
>
> However, I observed that some older managed indices continued to behave as if they were using the previous policy version, while newer indices appeared to use the updated policy.

Does it mean that you have older indices with the latest policy ID?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Jijo.john](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b3f665/32.png) [@Jijo.john](https://forum.opensearch.org/u/Jijo.john)\
**Post date:** [June 9, 2026, 12:36pm UTC](https://forum.opensearch.org/t/ism-policy-update-not-reflected-on-older-managed-indices-after-replica-count-change/28115/3 "2026-06-09T12:36:06Z")

</div>

No , older indices are with old policy version and new indices are showing new version. so when updating the policy , it is not getting updated to existing index

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![reshippie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ecd19e/32.png) [@reshippie](https://forum.opensearch.org/u/reshippie)\
**Post date:** [June 12, 2026, 4:15pm UTC](https://forum.opensearch.org/t/ism-policy-update-not-reflected-on-older-managed-indices-after-replica-count-change/28115/4 "2026-06-12T16:15:46Z")

</div>

Updates to policies aren’t automatically applied to existing indices.  
Through Dashboards you can go into Index Management → Policy managed indexes and chick Change policy at the top right. There you can choose indices, or `some_pattern*` and change to a “new” policy with the same name.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Jijo.john](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b3f665/32.png) [@Jijo.john](https://forum.opensearch.org/u/Jijo.john)\
**Post date:** [June 14, 2026, 2:41pm UTC](https://forum.opensearch.org/t/ism-policy-update-not-reflected-on-older-managed-indices-after-replica-count-change/28115/5 "2026-06-14T14:41:58Z")

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Thanks @reshippie , let me check that option

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/uploads/mauve_hedgehog/original/2X/3/33547ea01a5b12dcca2958411d3edd97ae2ea8c1.png) [@system](https://forum.opensearch.org/u/system)\
**Post date:** [August 13, 2026, 2:42pm UTC](https://forum.opensearch.org/t/ism-policy-update-not-reflected-on-older-managed-indices-after-replica-count-change/28115/6 "2026-08-13T14:42:15Z")

</div>

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