What must exist prior to setting up HEC in Splunk Cloud?

The requirement for having an index in place prior to setting up the HTTP Event Collector (HEC) in Splunk Cloud is fundamental to HEC's functionality. HEC is designed to accept and ingest data over HTTP, and for that data to be stored and managed appropriately within Splunk, it needs to be routed to a specific index.

An index in Splunk serves as a data repository where all the incoming data is stored, organized, and made searchable. When you configure HEC, you essentially create a channel for data to flow into Splunk, but without a designated index, there would be no location for this incoming data. The index not only facilitates data storage but also plays a crucial role in ensuring performance and management of the ingested data.

While other components like forwarders and search heads can interact with HEC, they are not prerequisites for setting it up. The primary necessity is to have at least one index defined in the system into which the data can be stored upon ingestion through HEC.