# Watcher history index - use case and good practices

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/watcher-history-index-use-case-and-good-practices/153067>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Tags:** elastic-stack-alerting\
**Created:** [October 18, 2018, 8:39pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/watcher-history-index-use-case-and-good-practices/153067 "2018-10-18T20:39:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![mpandey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/bc79bd/32.png) [@mpandey](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/mpandey)\
**Post date:** [October 18, 2018, 8:39pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/watcher-history-index-use-case-and-good-practices/153067/1 "2018-10-18T20:39:41Z")

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Hi everyone,

I have enabled monitoring on my production cluster and pushing the logs to the monitoring cluster. But I see **.watcher-history-7** index is getting created every day in my prod cluster. It would be great someone can enlighten me on the following points:

- What is the use of this index?
- Is it safe enough to delete these indexes? What is the safe period for us to persist this index?

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**Author:** ![spinscale](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/spinscale/32/25011_2.png) [@spinscale](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/spinscale)\
**Post date:** [October 19, 2018, 9:03am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/watcher-history-index-use-case-and-good-practices/153067/2 "2018-10-19T09:03:28Z")

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every execution of a watch will result in a so called watch record. This watch record is indexed into the watch history in order to have a trail of watch executions.

If you enable monitoring and alerting can be run as well (based on your license), then monitoring will install some watches, i.e. to notify you about license expirations or running different versions of elasticsearch within the same cluster.

You can safely delete those indices.

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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:** [November 16, 2018, 9:03am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/watcher-history-index-use-case-and-good-practices/153067/3 "2018-11-16T09:03:32Z")

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