# Creating elasticsearch index mandatory?

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/creating-elasticsearch-index-mandatory/19081>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [August 4, 2014, 8:03pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/creating-elasticsearch-index-mandatory/19081 "2014-08-04T20:03:05Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Acche\_Din](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3da27b/32.png) [@Acche\_Din](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Acche_Din)\
**Post date:** [August 4, 2014, 8:03pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/creating-elasticsearch-index-mandatory/19081/1 "2014-08-04T20:03:05Z")

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Hello All,

I have a ELK setup 'out of the box' . My goal is to parse apache logs via  
logstash and display it in kibana.

I would like to know if it is mandatory to create an index on elasticsearch  
so as to store the result from apache logs(I have logstash.conf  
output=\>elasticsearch)

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**Author:** ![brian\_yoder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f1d935/32.png) [@brian\_yoder](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/brian_yoder)\
**Post date:** [August 4, 2014, 9:58pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/creating-elasticsearch-index-mandatory/19081/2 "2014-08-04T21:58:50Z")

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By default, Elasticsearch automatically creates an index if a document is  
being added and the index doesn't already exist.

Logstash automatically specifies a time-based index with day precision for  
each log entry. In other words:

logstash-2014.07.28  
logstash-2014.07.29  
logstash-2014.07.30  
logstash-2014.07.31  
logstash-2014.08.01  
logstash-2014.08.02  
logstash-2014.08.03  
logstash-2014.08.04

And Kibana's time picker automatically assumes the logstash defaults, so  
you should be good to go.

One thing that initially tripped me up, and might trip you up: When I first  
ran Kibana I didn't see any of my data. But that's because I had loaded  
some test data into it, and the default time picker only went back a few  
minutes into the past.

Brian

On Monday, August 4, 2014 4:03:05 PM UTC-4, Acche Din wrote:

> Hello All,
> 
> I have a ELK setup 'out of the box' . My goal is to parse apache logs via  
> logstash and display it in kibana.
> 
> I would like to know if it is mandatory to create an index on  
> elasticsearch so as to store the result from apache logs(I have  
> logstash.conf output=\>elasticsearch)

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [July 6, 2017, 1:10am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/creating-elasticsearch-index-mandatory/19081/3 "2017-07-06T01:10:51Z")

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