[Website]: Include "Add a data tier" and "Disable a Data Tier" in sidebar links

[rseldner]

Type of issue

Other

What documentation page is affected

https://www.elastic.co/docs/manage-data/lifecycle/data-tiers

What happened?

We used to have a dedicated Disable an Elasticsearch data tier page in our EC docs that was very easy to locate

ECH: https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/cloud/current/ec-disable-data-tier.html (this redirects now)
ECE: https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/cloud-enterprise/3.8/ece-disable-data-tier.html

This page has been merged into this general data tiers doc and it's sort of buried in there in between the ECH/ECE and self-managed deployments sections. It is not obvious where in the overall page it is located.
https://www.elastic.co/docs/manage-data/lifecycle/data-tiers

So I wonder if the headings should be tweaked so the Disable a Data Tier section appears in the sidebar.

Additional info

Opinion: The organization of the merged docs has made things more difficult to locate.

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Docs issue scope

Summary

The issue reports that the "Add a data tier" and "Disable a data tier" procedures, which previously had their own dedicated pages in the ECH and ECE docs, are now buried in the merged data-tiers.md page at #### (h4) heading depth. Because the on-page mini-TOC only renders 2 levels of headings (h2 and h3), these sections are invisible in the sidebar. The team's comments agree this is a heading-depth/page-structure problem and suggest extracting the procedural content into child pages. There are no linked code PRs — this is a pure docs reorganization issue, and the relevant source file is manage-data/lifecycle/data-tiers.md.

Request accuracy

Accurate — the file's heading structure confirms that "Add a data tier" (line 101) and "Disable a data tier" (line 123) are at #### depth, nested under ### ECH or ECE, and are therefore absent from the mini-TOC.

Next action for author

Restructure data-tiers.md by extracting the "Add a data tier" and "Disable a data tier" ECH/ECE procedures into dedicated child pages (or promote those headings to h2/h3 with deployment-type tabs/filters) so they appear in the left-hand sidebar.

Impact: Medium

Scope boundary

The tier-description sections (Hot, Warm, Cold, Frozen, Content) and the "Data tier index allocation" reference section do not need structural changes to address this issue; the allocation section already appears in the mini-TOC at h2/h3 depth.

Recommended documentation targets

Page	URL	Action	Impact	Confidence	Why this page?
Data tiers (data-tiers.md)	https://www.elastic.co/docs/manage-data/lifecycle/data-tiers	Update existing page (restructure headings or remove extracted content)	Medium	High	Source of the buried sections; must be reorganized regardless of approach
Disable a data tier (new child page)	(new) manage-data/lifecycle/disable-data-tier.md	Create new page	Medium	High	Restores the dedicated page that previously existed for ECH and ECE; the section is ~330 lines of procedural how-to content
Add a data tier (new child page or promoted heading)	(new or inline)	Create new page or Add section to existing page (heading promotion)	Medium	Medium	The "Add a data tier" section is short enough to remain inline if headings are reorganized, but a child page is consistent with the "Disable" approach

Recommendations

1. Create manage-data/lifecycle/disable-data-tier.md — move the entire "Disable a data tier" section (lines 123–451 of data-tiers.md) to a dedicated child page. This restores the original ECH/ECE standalone page pattern and makes it visible in the left-hand sidebar. The old redirects (ec-disable-data-tier.html, ece-disable-data-tier.html) already map to this page's URL, so updating the mapped_pages frontmatter on the new file is required.
2. Create manage-data/lifecycle/add-data-tier.md (or promote heading inline) — if a child page is preferred for consistency, move the "Add a data tier" section similarly. If the section is kept on the parent page, promote #### Add a data tier to ### Add a data tier and restructure the ECH/ECE subsection accordingly so it renders in the mini-TOC.
3. Update data-tiers.md — after extracting procedural content, replace the removed sections with short summaries and cross-links to the new child pages. Update the Configure data tiers section intro accordingly.
4. Update redirects.yml — verify that the existing redirected URLs (ec-disable-data-tier.html, ece-disable-data-tier.html) point correctly to the new child page URL, not to the parent page.

Notes

• Disable a data tier is a long, multi-step how-to with two h5 sub-procedures ("Non-searchable snapshot data tier" and "Searchable snapshot data tier"). It fits squarely in the how-to content type and is self-contained — ideal for a standalone child page.
• Add a data tier is short and could stay on the parent as a promoted h3 to minimize restructuring, or be extracted for consistency.
• Creating child pages will require updating any left-hand nav/TOC configuration (docset.yml or equivalent) to include the new pages as children of the data-tiers entry.
• No new redirects are needed for add-data-tier since that section has no legacy standalone URL.

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React with 👍 if helpful, 👎 if not.

[shainaraskas]

this is a limitation of our on this page structure (only has two levels) - we could consider breaking up these pages possibly

[yetanothertw]

we could consider breaking up these pages possibly

I agree, I think we should move the procedural content out of the Data tiers page. Configuring data tiers can be moved into two new child pages: for ECH/ECE and for self-managed.

There's other weirdness on this page with the Data tier index allocation section not showing up in the mini-toc. This can possibly also be a child page (need to look into it a bit, but certain improvements can be done here).

[yetanothertw]

/docs-issue-scope