Up to now, many crack repair techniques have been developed for inhibiting crack growth in structural components. However, the simplest way for inhibiting crack growth is to apply a indentation at the crack tip or at some distance ahead of the expected crack growth path so as to produce residual compressive stresses that can reduce the effective stresses around the crack tip. In spite of its importance to the aerospace industry, little attention has been devoted to evaluation of the indentation residual stress effect on the fatigue crack initiation life quantitatively. Therefore, in the present work, the magnitude and distribution of the indentation residual stresses were investigated in order to estimate the beneficial effect on fatigue crack initiation by using finite element method. Furthermore, to examine the validity of finite element analysis results, residual stress distribution in the indented specimen was measured by using X-ray diffraction technique, and fatigue crack behavior at fastener hole in aluminum alloy 7075-T6 before and after indentation processes was investigated.