DPA repository: Data retention policy

If you need to reduce the amount of storage that DPA uses, you can change the settings that specify how much historical data is stored in the DPA repository. Changing the CLEAN_DAYS_OF_DETAIL setting has the biggest impact because 80 to 90% of the storage consumption is usually for detailed data. 

NOTE: While you can set as high as 90 days. The amount of data collected will vary by server and workload. On very active servers large amounts of detailed data can cause problems with the cleaning services and loading or some resource charts.   

Default behavior 

DPA is configured to hold 30 days of detailed second-by-second data out of the box. DPA will summarize to hourly data but it still keeps the rolling 30 days of detail. After 30 days, DPA summarizes the hourly to daily and removes the details for anything older than 30 days (keeping hourly for 90 days). After 90 days, DPA retains only daily summarized data. It retains this data for five years.

Changing the default behavior 

To change this default configuration, click Options > Administration > Advanced Options > DB Instance Options, and then select a database Instance.

You can change values for the following settings. More information about each setting can be found within the DPA UI.

• CLEAN_DAYS_OF_DETAIL (default value is 30 days)
• CLEAN_END_HOUR (default value is 3 AM the day following when the cleaner started)
• CLEAN_INTERVAL_DAYS (default value is 1 day)
• CLEAN_START_HOUR (default value is 10PM local DPA time)

You can change the five years of daily data and the 90 days of hourly data. The parameters for these are listed below:

• CLEAN_DAYS_OF_TREND (default value is 1825 days)
• TREND_HOURLY_DAYS (default value is 90 days)

*You may need to shrink your database data files in order to reclaim this space after a successful run of the cleaner process with the settings changed.  The default run of this process is 10 PM.