Q: Why doesn’t Curator work with AWS Elasticsearch?edit

A: Because Curator requires access to the /_cluster/state/metadata endpoint.edit

AWS ES 5.3 officially supports Curator for index managment operations. AWS ES 5.3 does not yet expose the /_snapshot/_status endpoint Curator uses, and therefore does not yet support snapshot operations. Older versions of AWS ES are not supported by Curator versions 4 or 5.

There is some confusion because Curator 3 supported AWS ES, but Curator 4 & 5 do not. There are even some IAM credentials listed as options for client connections. These are currently available, but not able to be used. This may change at some point, so they remain at the ready until then.

Curator 4 & 5 require access to the /_cluster/state/metadata endpoint in order to pull metadata at IndexList initialization time for all indices. This metadata is used to determine index routing information, index sizing, index state (either open or close), aliases, and more. Curator 4 switched to doing this in order to reduce the number of repetitive client calls that were made in the previous versions. Curator 5 uses the same method.

AWS currently has a 5.3 version of Elasticsearch, which officially supports Curator for index management operations only. AWS ES does not yet expose the /_snapshot/status endpoint, which is required by Curator for snapshot management. Additionally, AWS ES versions 5.1 and older do not fully support the /_cluster/state/metadata endpoint, which means that Curator cannot be used to manage indices in AWS if your cluster is version 5.1 or older.