# Meaning of automatic index cleanup
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/meaning-of-automatic-index-cleanup/83217
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [April 21, 2017, 1:38pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/meaning-of-automatic-index-cleanup/83217 "2017-04-21T13:38:46Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@kylegordon](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/kylegordon)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2017, 1:38pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/meaning-of-automatic-index-cleanup/83217/1 "2017-04-21T13:38:46Z")
I have no desire to use automatic cleanup, yet when installing the basic license for x-pack, I am greeted with the message 'Automatic index cleanup is locked to 7 days for clusters with [BASIC] license.'
I already use Curator to maintain a few weeks of data. Will X-Pack Basic delete everything older than 7 days? The message is somewhat unclear.
Having looked around a dev docker setup, I can't find any options relating to this 'cleanup' operation. Can anyone elaborate?
---
### Author:  [@TimV](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/TimV)
#### Post date: [April 23, 2017, 11:39pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/meaning-of-automatic-index-cleanup/83217/2 "2017-04-23T23:39:57Z")
The text might by slightly different in the version you're running but in 5.3.0 the section you are referring to says:
```auto
"monitoring" : [
"Multi-cluster support is disabled for clusters with [BASIC] license. If you are\nrunning multiple clusters, users won't be able to access the clusters with\n[BASIC] licenses from within a single X-Pack Kibana instance. You will have to deploy a\nseparate and dedicated X-pack Kibana instance for each [BASIC] cluster you wish to monitor.",
"Automatic index cleanup is locked to 7 days for clusters with [BASIC] license."
],
```
This message is saying that the BASIC license keeps exactly 7 days of **monitoring data** in the local monitoring indices.
The nested structure is intentional - those comments are directly referring to the monitoring functionality. Essentially, the `xpack.monitoring.history.duration` [configuration setting](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/x-pack/current/monitoring-settings.html#monitoring-collection-settings) is fixed at 7 days.
---
### Author:  [@kylegordon](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/kylegordon)
#### Post date: [April 25, 2017, 9:17am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/meaning-of-automatic-index-cleanup/83217/3 "2017-04-25T09:17:27Z")
Nice, thank you for the clarification.
---
### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [May 23, 2017, 9:30am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/meaning-of-automatic-index-cleanup/83217/4 "2017-05-23T09:30:42Z")
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