You can create two types of indexes:

• Events indexes, for event-based log data. Events indexes impose minimal structure and can accommodate any kind of data, including metrics data.
• Metrics indexes, for metric data points. Metrics indexes use a highly structured format to handle the higher volume and lower latency demands associated with metrics data. Putting metrics data into metrics indexes results in faster performance and less use of index storage, compared to putting the same data into events indexes.

Events indexes are the default index type. To create events indexes, see Create a Splunk Cloud Platform events index.

To create metrics indexes, see Create a Splunk Cloud Platform metrics index.

For more information about the metrics data format see Metrics.