Curator

From: https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/client/curator/current/about.html#about

Elasticsearch Curator helps you curate, or manage, your Elasticsearch indices and snapshots by:

  1. Obtaining the full list of indices (or snapshots) from the cluster, as the actionable list
  2. Iterate through a list of user-defined filters to progressively remove indices (or snapshots) from this actionable list as needed.
  3. Perform various actions on the items which remain in the actionable list.

Curator runs as a Docker container within Security Onion. It runs every minute and is controlled by cron jobs defined in /etc/cron.d/. When Curator completes an action, it logs such activity in a log file found in /var/log/curator/curator.log.

Curator defaults to closing indices older than 30 days. To modify this, change CURATOR_CLOSE_DAYS in /etc/nsm/securityonion.conf.

As your disk reaches capacity, Curator starts deleting old indices to prevent your disk from filling up. To change the limit, modify LOG_SIZE_LIMIT in /etc/nsm/securityonion.conf.

Actions

Curator actions are stored in /etc/curator/actions. These actions are run every minute from the cron jobs located in /etc/cron.d/curator-*.

If you would like to add a new action, you can certainly do so, and add another cron job in /etc/cron.d to automate the process.

For example, a new process for snapshotting would require a new action file, Elasticsearch configuration, and a cron job to automate it all: