When .ml-config index is created in the old version (say, 6.8), cluster is upgraded to a new version (say, 7.3) and the first config document with a new field is indexed (e.g: DataFrameAnalyticsConfig), the default mapping type (i.e. type "keyword") is applied for this new field as implemented in ElasticsearchMappings::addDefaultMapping. This default behavior is usually not desirable.