View and manage data retention

With New Relic's Data retention UI page, you can review and manage how long different types of data are stored in the New Relic database (NRDB). Keep data for shorter periods to protect sensitive information and return queries faster, or keep it for longer periods to be able to see and analyze data and trends over a longer period.

Requirements

This doc applies for organizations on our usage-based pricing model. For data retention for our original pricing model, see Original data retention.

The ability to edit data retention requires Pro or Enterprise edition.

Permission-related requirements:

• Newer user model: requires the Billing user role.
• Original user model: requires the Insights event retention capability, which the Admin, Owner, and Data retention add-on manager have.

Find the data retention UI

The Data retention UI page is located in the Data management hub.

Default retention periods

The best way to understand your New Relic data retention is to go to the Data retention UI page. One reason this is recommended is because your organization may have edited your settings and they may no longer be the default settings documented here.

This table shows the default namespace retention settings for organizations on our usage-based pricing model.

Retention details for assorted data types

In this section are details about a few different types of data, including some data types that have retention settings that can't be changed.

Edit retention values

If you meet the requirements, you can increase the retention periods for some types of data. For example, you might reduce your retention values for your APM data to optimize the performance of your querying of that data. Conversely, you might increase retention for some data types so that you can do more granular analysis over longer time ranges, or to meet data compliance requirements.

For each additional 30 days of retention that is added to a namespace's default retention period, the cost is $0.05 per GB ingested per month.

Reduce retention values

When you reduce the number of days that specific data sources are retained, existing data of that source type won't immediately disappear. That data might be visible and returned in queries for up to several weeks. We have safeguards in place to ensure you don't accidentally delete data, but this also means that reducing retention values isn't a good strategy for quickly removing data.

That said, your change is registered in the system within 12 hours and new data of the adjusted source type will be retained for the new duration.

Note that reducing data retention below your contracted retention values will not reduce any New Relic data ingest charges. Conversely, increasing retention for targeted telemetry data types is likely to trigger a conversation with New Relic about adjusting your data ingest charges.

Copy retention values

If you have multiple accounts in your organization, you can also copy retention values from one account to other accounts. To do this, select the Copy settings to other accounts link, and then select the accounts you want to apply the retention values to.

Deleting data

Once telemetry data (events, metrics, logs, traces) is reported to New Relic and available for querying, that data cannot be edited or deleted. This is a purposeful design decision that optimizes New Relic's speed and performance. Data will expire after its data retention period ends. If you need to delete data that has already been reported, contact your New Relic representative.

Manage retention via API

In addition to changing your retention settings in the UI, you can use our NerdGraph API. Some example NerdGraph requests are included below. Note that your data retention changes take effect within 24 hours after an update.

query {
 actor {
   account(id: YOUR_ACCOUNT_ID) {
     dataManagement {
       customizableRetention {
         eventNamespaces {
           namespace
         }
       }
     }
   }
 }
}

query {
 actor {
   account(id: YOUR_ACCOUNT_ID) {
     dataManagement {
       eventRetentionRules {
         id
         deletedAt
         deletedById
         createdAt
         createdById
         retentionInDays
         namespace
       }
     }
   }
 }
}

query {
 actor {
   account(id: YOUR_ACCOUNT_ID) {
     dataManagement {
       eventRetentionRule(namespace: "APM") {
         id
         deletedById
         deletedAt
         createdById
         createdAt
         retentionInDays
         namespace
       }
     }
   }
 }
}

mutation {
 dataManagementCreateEventRetentionRule(accountId: YOUR_ACCOUNT_ID, namespace: "APM", retentionInDays: 8) {
   id
   deletedById
   deletedAt
   createdById
   createdAt
   retentionInDays
   namespace
 }
}

mutation {
 dataManagementDeleteEventRetentionRule(accountId: YOUR_ACCOUNT_ID, namespace: "APM") {
   id
   deletedById
   deletedAt
   createdById
   createdAt
   retentionInDays
   namespace
 }
}

mutation {
  dataManagementCopyRetentions(
    sourceAccountId: SOURCE_ACCOUNT_ID,
    destinationAccountIds: [DESTINATION_ACCOUNT_ID_1, DESTINATION_ACCOUNT_ID_2, DESTINATION_ACCOUNT_ID_3])
  {
    success
    failure
  }
}

Account inheritance

The data retention settings of a parent account are inherited by its children accounts. In this context, an organization's first account is treated as the parent account, and other accounts added to the organization inherit the settings in that account. You also have the option to override those settings and set account-specific data retention settings.

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