Elasticsearch's Index Lifecycle Management (ILM) automates administrative tasks such as index rotation, aging, and data removal, ensuring data integrity by executing tasks sequentially and preventing progress if errors occur. The ILM history index, enabled by default, logs historical summaries of ILM activities, offering a valuable resource for troubleshooting and proactive alerting when issues arise. This data can be accessed in Kibana and helps identify problems like prolonged subaction durations, which may indicate underlying system strains. Users often retain ILM history data longer than cluster logs for compliance reasons. The Health API, available from version 8.7, provides comprehensive ILM issue reports, while monitoring rules in Kibana can be set to alert teams when intervention is needed to resolve ILM errors, ensuring the smooth progression of index lifecycles. The post emphasizes that the timing and release of features mentioned are subject to Elastic's discretion.