Data Storage Policy¶

As business applications increase, the scope of data observability requirements continues to expand, and the storage duration needs for different types of data will also adjust accordingly. Guance provides multiple data storage policies. You can customize your data retention period based on your needs, effectively controlling data storage costs and saving expenses.

Data Retention Period¶

Changing Retention Period¶

Owners of Commercial Plan workspaces can adjust data storage policies multiple times in a day. The first change takes effect immediately, while subsequent changes within the same day will take effect the next day according to the last adjustment record. After changing the policy, data will be evaluated for expiration based on the latest configuration and cleared at midnight the next day.

Steps to change:

1. Go to Manage > Workspace Settings > Change Data Storage Policy;
2. Click Replace;
3. Select the data type whose storage policy you want to modify and click Edit;
4. Choose the desired retention period;
5. After making changes, click Confirm to update the data retention period for the current workspace.

Important Notes¶

1. Only owners of Commercial Plan workspaces can perform this operation;
2. After changing the Metrics data retention policy, old data under the previous policy will be deleted. Please choose carefully.

3. For changes in retention policies for data types other than Metrics, the new policy takes effect immediately, but old data under the previous policy will not be immediately deleted and will still incur charges until it is deleted according to the rolling deletion schedule.

   • Shorter retention period: Suppose APM data changes from 14 days to 7 days. Before the change date, data is charged based on the 14-day policy; after the change date, new data will be indexed and charged based on the new 7-day policy.
   • Longer retention period: Suppose APM data changes from 7 days to 14 days. Before the change date, data is charged based on the 7-day policy; after the change date, new data will be indexed and charged based on the new 14-day policy.

For more details, refer to Guance ES Multi-Tenant Lifecycle Management Practice.

Data Storage Methods¶

Guance offers two data storage solutions: Default Storage and SLS Storage:

• Default Storage: Uses Guance GuanceDB to store metrics data, and Elasticsearch / OpenSearch to store log data;
• SLS Storage: Uses Alibaba Cloud Log Service SLS to store data, with LogStore storing log data and MetricStore storing metrics data.

For Free Plan¶

Billing Information¶

1. If any billing items in the Free Plan reach their data quota, data reporting will stop updating; infrastructure and event data will continue to report updates, so you can still see infrastructure list data and event data;
2. The Free Plan supports online upgrades to the Commercial Plan. No charges are incurred unless upgraded. Once upgraded to a paid plan, rollback is not possible;
3. After upgrading to the Commercial Plan, collected data will continue to report to the Guance workspace, but data collected during the Free Plan period will no longer be viewable;
4. Time Series and data forwarding statistics are for all data, while other billing items are incremental data. Incremental data statistics reset the free quota at midnight each day and are valid for that day.

Guance supports a free start, pay-as-you-go billing method, providing an out-of-the-box cloud platform for comprehensive observability. The Free Plan offers a 7-day data retention policy. If you need to change the data retention policy, you must upgrade to the Guance Commercial Plan.