# Can I delete .opendistro-ism-managed-index-history-\* indexes at some point?

**URL:** <https://forum.opensearch.org/t/can-i-delete-opendistro-ism-managed-index-history-indexes-at-some-point/5628>\
**Category:** Index Management\
**Created:** [April 15, 2021, 1:44pm UTC](https://forum.opensearch.org/t/can-i-delete-opendistro-ism-managed-index-history-indexes-at-some-point/5628 "2021-04-15T13:44:04Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![GSmith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bbe5ce/32.png) [@GSmith](https://forum.opensearch.org/u/GSmith)\
**Post date:** [April 15, 2021, 1:44pm UTC](https://forum.opensearch.org/t/can-i-delete-opendistro-ism-managed-index-history-indexes-at-some-point/5628/1 "2021-04-15T13:44:04Z")

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It appears that the ISM indexes (e.g. .opendistro-ism-managed-index-history-2021.03.17-000040) are kept around indefinitely by default. Can I safely delete “old” instances of this index? Can I define an IM policy to have ISM clean-up after itself? Is there a suggested retention period?

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**Author:** ![dbbaughe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbe5ce/32.png) [@dbbaughe](https://forum.opensearch.org/u/dbbaughe)\
**Post date:** [April 15, 2021, 2:40pm UTC](https://forum.opensearch.org/t/can-i-delete-opendistro-ism-managed-index-history-indexes-at-some-point/5628/2 "2021-04-15T14:40:24Z")

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Are you on an older version @GSmith? I remember we added some retention logic for the history indices a while back. If you’re on an older version without it, yes it’s fine to delete them and even set an ISM policy on them to delete them after x time (although there is a built in feature to do that as described below).

Take a look at the 5 settings prefixed with `opendistro.index_state_management.history` towards the bottom.

> **[Settings](https://opendistro.github.io/for-elasticsearch-docs/docs/im/ism/settings/)**
>
> Documentation for Open Distro, the community-driven, 100% open source distribution of Elasticsearch OSS with advanced security, alerting, deep performance analysis, and more.

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**Author:** ![GSmith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bbe5ce/32.png) [@GSmith](https://forum.opensearch.org/u/GSmith)\
**Post date:** [April 16, 2021, 8:08pm UTC](https://forum.opensearch.org/t/can-i-delete-opendistro-ism-managed-index-history-indexes-at-some-point/5628/3 "2021-04-16T20:08:03Z")

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Yes, I’m using ODFE 1.7.0. Will test to see if that setting works with that version; if not, will set up an ISM policy. Thanks for the quick response.