About managing indexes

When you add data, the indexer processes it and stores it in an index. By default, data you feed to an indexer is stored in the main index, but you can create and specify other indexes for different data inputs.

An index is a collection of directories and files. These are located under $SPLUNK_HOME/var/lib/splunk. Index directories are also called buckets and are organized by age. For information on index storage, see How Splunk Enterprise stores indexes.

In addition to the main index, Splunk Enterprise comes preconfigured with a number of internal indexes. Internal indexes are named starting with an underscore (_). To see a full list of indexes in Splunk Web, click the Settings link in the upper portion of Splunk Web and then select Indexes. The list includes:

• main: The default Splunk Enterprise index. All processed external data is stored here unless otherwise specified.
• _internal: This index includes Splunk Enterprise internal logs and metrics.
• _audit: Events from the file system change monitor, auditing, and all user search history.

A number of topics in this manual describe ways you can manage your indexes. In particular, the following topics are helpful in index management:

• Create custom indexes
• Remove indexes and data from Splunk
• Configure index storage
• Move the index database
• Use multiple partitions for index data
• Configure index size
• Set limits on disk usage
• Back up indexed data
• Set a retirement and archiving policy

For more information about the indexing process

To learn more about indexes, see:

• The topic How indexing works in this manual.
• The topic How Splunk stores indexes in this manual.
• The chapter About clusters and index replication in this manual.
• The chapter Configure event processing in Getting Data In.
• The chapter Set up and use summary indexes in the Knowledge Manager Manual, for information about working with extremely large datasets.