# Clear out old alerts

**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/clear-out-old-alerts/383019
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [October 27, 2025, 12:50pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/clear-out-old-alerts/383019 "2025-10-27T12:50:58Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![dot-mike](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/dot-mike/32/143339_2.png) [@dot-mike](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dot-mike)
#### Post date: [October 27, 2025, 12:50pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/clear-out-old-alerts/383019/1 "2025-10-27T12:50:58Z")

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Hi community,

is it safe to remove the indicies `.internal.alerts-observability.logs.alerts-default-<id>` or `.internal.alerts-observability.metrics.alerts-default-<id>` to clear out old alerts?

I want to start from scratch. I checked these are not write indexes.

If not, what is the best approach to clear out alerts?

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### Author: ![celikbaris61](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a5b964/32.png) [@celikbaris61](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/celikbaris61)
#### Post date: [October 27, 2025, 2:06pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/clear-out-old-alerts/383019/2 "2025-10-27T14:06:32Z")

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> [@dot-mike](#):
>
> Hi community,
> 
> is it safe to remove the indicies `.internal.alerts-observability.logs.alerts-default-<id>` or `.internal.alerts-observability.metrics.alerts-default-<id>` to clear out old alerts?
> 
> I want to start from scratch. I checked these are not write indexes.
> 
> If not, what is the best approach to clear out alerts?

i think Observability “Alerts as Data” data streams system/stored indexes. Kibana/Observability manages these. Deleting individual documents/indexes from these indexes may cause alerts to reappear when they are recreated or references to be broken.

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### Author: ![DineshNaik](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/dineshnaik/32/89308_2.png) [@DineshNaik](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/DineshNaik)
#### Post date: [October 27, 2025, 3:54pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/clear-out-old-alerts/383019/3 "2025-10-27T15:54:35Z")

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@dot-mike As long as you have confirmed these are not current write indices and the data is no longer necessary for observability or monitoring purposes. Deleting non-write indices will not impact active alerting. Also good to back up any important data before removal.