# Is data stream backing indices are explicitly created or auto created?

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/is-data-stream-backing-indices-are-explicitly-created-or-auto-created/373490>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [January 22, 2025, 3:55am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/is-data-stream-backing-indices-are-explicitly-created-or-auto-created/373490 "2025-01-22T03:55:50Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Richard\_Zhang](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/richard_zhang/32/140473_2.png) [@Richard\_Zhang](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Richard_Zhang)\
**Post date:** [January 22, 2025, 3:55am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/is-data-stream-backing-indices-are-explicitly-created-or-auto-created/373490/1 "2025-01-22T03:55:50Z")

</div>

Hi everyone,

For example, `elastic-cloud-logs-8` is a data stream and its underlying indices are like this `.ds-elastic-cloud-logs-8-2025.01.22-016804`.

So question is: is data stream backing indices are explicitly created or auto created?

to be specific, if I set auto\_create\_index to false in cluster settings, will the backing indices be created successfully?

Note: I have tried for this specific case in the example, it still get created successfully. So the question is for all data stream generally, is there a config for explicit creation or auto-creation?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Richard\_Zhang](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/richard_zhang/32/140473_2.png) [@Richard\_Zhang](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Richard_Zhang)\
**Post date:** [July 7, 2025, 6:03am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/is-data-stream-backing-indices-are-explicitly-created-or-auto-created/373490/2 "2025-07-07T06:03:43Z")

</div>

anyone could help on this? Thanks.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/christian_dahlqvist/32/4617_2.png) [@Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Christian_Dahlqvist)\
**Post date:** [July 7, 2025, 6:07am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/is-data-stream-backing-indices-are-explicitly-created-or-auto-created/373490/3 "2025-07-07T06:07:29Z")

</div>

Data streams use rollover so indices are explicitly created behind the scenes by Elasticsearch when a rollover happens. auto\_create\_index determines whether a new index is automatically created if you index a new document into an index that does not already exist.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Richard\_Zhang](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/richard_zhang/32/140473_2.png) [@Richard\_Zhang](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Richard_Zhang)\
**Post date:** [July 7, 2025, 6:25am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/is-data-stream-backing-indices-are-explicitly-created-or-auto-created/373490/4 "2025-07-07T06:25:10Z")

</div>

> [@Christian\_Dahlqvist](#):
>
> index

Thank you. That is so helpful.