Often, we have a need to store time series data in Elasticsearch. Typically, one would create a single index to hold all documents. This typical approach of one big index to hold all documents has its own limitations, especially for the following reasons:

• Scaling the index with an unpredictable volume over time
• Changing the mapping over time
• Automatically deleting older documents

Let's look at how each problem manifests itself when we choose a single monolithic index.