InfluxDB: Avoid disk space saturation

This documentation is part of the Getting started guide. You can view the complete guide here: How to get started with InfluxDB.

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InfluxDB is designed as a time series database and often handles a large number of metrics. As these databases typically do not delete data automatically, your database can grow indefinitely and use up all available disk space.

To prevent disk space saturation, InfluxDB offers two solutions:

1. Retention policies: Delete data older than a defined date. For example, you might decide to remove data older than 365 days.
2. Downsampling data: Reduce data resolution over time. For example, if you record a temperature every second, you might want to:
   1. Keep temperature data with 1-second resolution for the last 5 minutes.
   2. Maintain maximum, minimum, and average temperatures with 1-minute resolution for the past 24 hours.
   3. Store maximum, minimum, and average temperatures with 1-hour resolution for older data.

Using retention policies allows you to store historical data for extended periods without needing terabytes of storage space. You will find more information about downsampling in the official documentation.