# Safeguard / Circuit-breakers to prevent accidental deletion of a large number of documents
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/safeguard-circuit-breakers-to-prevent-accidental-deletion-of-a-large-number-of-documents/234431
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [May 26, 2020, 11:46pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/safeguard-circuit-breakers-to-prevent-accidental-deletion-of-a-large-number-of-documents/234431 "2020-05-26T23:46:35Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@sg.esearch](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/sg.esearch)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2020, 11:46pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/safeguard-circuit-breakers-to-prevent-accidental-deletion-of-a-large-number-of-documents/234431/1 "2020-05-26T23:46:35Z")
We have a couple of clusters where it is extremely hard to re-ingest data again.
Some of them use nested docs, some don't.
But all of them want to use DBQ (Delete By Query).
But deletion-by-query is a bit scary feature since it relies absolutely on the query being foolproof.
If by chance a wrong query is executed, then those documents will get deleted.
Is there a setting to limit the number of documents being deleted in a single DBQ?
Say something like:
```auto
safeguards.delete.max.percentage = 25
safeguards.delete.max.count = 10000
```
So if a DBQ tries to delete more than 25% of documents or more than 10,000 documents, then ES will raise an exception to the user trying to run the DBQ.
---
### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [June 23, 2020, 11:46pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/safeguard-circuit-breakers-to-prevent-accidental-deletion-of-a-large-number-of-documents/234431/2 "2020-06-23T23:46:39Z")
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