Managing time-series data in Amazon OpenSearch Service with data streams

A typical workflow to manage time-series data involves multiple steps, such as creating a rollover index alias, defining a write index, and defining common mappings and settings for the backing indices.

Data streams in Amazon OpenSearch Service help simplify this initial setup process. Data streams work out of the box for time-based data such as application logs that are typically append-only in nature.

Data streams requires OpenSearch 1.0 or later. Full documentation for the feature is available in the OpenSearch documentation.

Getting started with data streams

A data stream is internally composed of multiple backing indices. Search requests are routed to all the backing indices, while indexing requests are routed to the latest write index.

Step 1: Create an index template

To create a data stream, you first need to create an index template that configures a set of indexes as a data stream. The data_stream object indicates that it’s a data stream and not a regular index template. The index pattern matches with the name of the data stream:

PUT _index_template/logs-template
{
  "index_patterns": [
    "my-data-stream",
    "logs-*"
  ],
  "data_stream": {},
  "priority": 100
}

In this case, each ingested document must have an @timestamp field. You can also define your own custom timestamp field as a property in the data_stream object:

PUT _index_template/logs-template
{
  "index_patterns": "my-data-stream",
  "data_stream": {
    "timestamp_field": {
      "name": "request_time"
    }
  }
}

Step 2: Create a data stream

After you create an index template, you can directly start ingesting data without creating a data stream.

Because we have a matching index template with a data_stream object, OpenSearch automatically creates the data stream:

POST logs-staging/_doc
{
  "message": "login attempt failed",
  "@timestamp": "2013-03-01T00:00:00"
}

Step 3: Ingest data into the data stream

To ingest data into a data stream, you can use the regular indexing APIs. Make sure every document that you index has a timestamp field. If you try to ingest a document that doesn’t have a timestamp field, you get an error.

POST logs-redis/_doc
{
  "message": "login attempt",
  "@timestamp": "2013-03-01T00:00:00"
}

Step 4: Searching a data stream

You can search a data stream just like you search a regular index or an index alias. The search operation applies to all of the backing indexes (all data present in the stream).

GET logs-redis/_search
{
  "query": {
    "match": {
      "message": "login"
    }
  }
}

Step 5: Rollover a data stream

You can set up an Index State Management (ISM) policy to automate the rollover process for the data stream. The ISM policy is applied to the backing indexes at the time of their creation. When you associate a policy to a data stream, it only affects the future backing indexes of that data stream. You also don’t need to provide the rollover_alias setting, because the ISM policy infers this information from the backing index.

Note

If you rollover a backing index to cold storage, OpenSearch removes this index from the data stream. Even if you move the index back to UltraWarm, the index remains independent and not part of the original data stream.

Step 6: Manage data streams in OpenSearch Dashboards

To manage data streams from OpenSearch Dashboards, open OpenSearch Dashboards, choose Index Management, select Indices or Policy managed indices.

Step 7: Delete a data stream

The delete operation first deletes the backing indexes of a data stream and then deletes the data stream itself.

To delete a data stream and all of its hidden backing indices:

DELETE _data_stream/name_of_data_stream