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This is an archived version of the documentation downloaded from LogScale Documentation Archives. Up to date documentation, and documentation for later versions, is available on LogScale Documentation

## Data Retention

For the retention of data for security and compliance, you can set LogScale to delete old data. Retention can be set in the user interface based on compressed file sizes, uncompressed file sizes, and on age of data. Retention deletes events in large chunks or segments. It doesn't delete individual events. The three types of retention enforced are independent — data is deleted when any one of them is marked for deleting.

Retention is set on a repository basis; you can retain data in different repositories for different durations. Changes to these settings can be controlled on a repository basis through the role-based access control.

To view the data storage and compression, see Cluster statistics.

To learn how to change data retention settings, see Data Retention.

### Compressed Size

The compressed setting is designed to allow the administrator to prevent the file system from growing too large. Configure the compressed settings for each repository so that the sum of all compressed sizes is less than the space available on the disk.

The compressed size calculation deletes data based on the amount of disk space consumed, taking replicas into account, until the amount on disk is below the setting. Replicas are handled by counting the copies in excess of the segment-replication settings as extra.

For example, in a cluster of three LogScale instances, a segment-replication of three, and a `CompressedSize` of 50 GB, the total disk usage on those three machines for this repository would be 150 GB. This lets the users see 50 GB of compressed data. See LogScale Multiple-byte Units for more information on how multiple-byte numbers are represented.

If the segment replication setting is then changed to two, the allowed disk usage drops to 100 GB in total on the three machines. The `retention-job` will then delete the oldest segments, leaving approximately 33 GB of searchable data at first. When more data flows in through ingest, the user will get back to having 50 GB of searchable compressed data in the 100 GB on disk, likely distributed evenly as 33GB on each LogScale instance in the cluster.

### Uncompressed Size

The uncompressed setting is designed to delete data based on a promise to keep at least this much of the input. Original size is measured as the size stored before compression and is thus the size of the internal format, not the data that was ingested. It also includes the size of any additional fields sent along with the raw events.

The uncompressed size retention triggers a delete when it is able to retain at least the amount specified as uncompressed limit. Uncompressed retention does not consider multiple replicas as more than one copy, as it is based on the amount of data that the users see.

### Age of Data

Data gets deleted when the latest event in the chunk is older than the configured retention using the value of the @timestamp field in the ingested data. In order to make sure that a user cannot see events older than the configured limit, LogScale also restricts the time interval when searching to the interval allowed by this retention setting. Retention by age effectively hides any event that is too old, even if the chunk still has other events that are still visible. The disk space is reclaimed once the latest event is sufficiently old.

### Performance Tuning for Long Retention

The defaults for LogScale are targeting retention times of data in the range of 1-6 months. If you plan to keep data for much longer you can reduce the number of files stored on disk by telling LogScale to create larger files. As retention "chops off" old data in chunks consisting of one file at a time, this will make those chunks larger.

If your LogScale repositories expect to have a retention of more than 6 months on average, you can increase the amount of data in each file, thus reducing the total number of files in the system. Changing these settings on a LogScale cluster has effect for files created after the change and making such a change is okay at any point in time.

ini

    # The default value in LogScale for installs where the average data retention is 0-6 months.
    # MAX_HOURS_SEGMENT_OPEN=24

    # Suggest using the default for LogScale installs where the average data retention is 6-18 months.
    # MAX_HOURS_SEGMENT_OPEN=48

    # Suggest using the default for LogScale installs where the average data retention is 2+ years.
    # MAX_HOURS_SEGMENT_OPEN=96

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