Manage databases

An InfluxDB database is a named location where time series data is stored. Each InfluxDB database has a retention period.

Retention periods

A database retention period is the maximum age of data stored in the database. The age of data is determined by the timestamp associated with each point. When a point’s timestamp is beyond the retention period (relative to now), the point is marked for deletion and is removed from the database the next time the retention enforcement service runs.

The minimum retention period for and InfluxDB database is 1 hour. The maximum retention period is infinite meaning data does not expire and will never be removed by the retention enforcement service.

Table and column limits

You can customize table (measurement) limits and table column limits when you create or update a database in InfluxDB Clustered.

Table limit

Default maximum number of tables: 500

Each measurement is represented by a table in a database. Your database’s table limit can be raised beyond the default limit of 500. InfluxData has production examples of clusters with 20,000+ active tables across multiple databases.

Increasing your table limit affects your InfluxDB cluster in the following ways:

Column limit

Default maximum number of columns: 250

Configurable maximum number of columns: 1000

Each row must include a time column, with the remaining columns representing tags and fields. As a result, a table with 250 columns can have one time column and up to 249 field and tag columns.

If you attempt to write to a table and exceed the column limit, the write request fails and InfluxDB returns an error.

If you update the column limit for a database, the limit applies to newly created tables; doesn’t override the column limit for existing tables.

Increasing your column limit affects your InfluxDB cluster in the following ways:

influxctl database create \
  --retention-period 30d \
  --max-tables 500 \
  --max-columns 250 \
  DATABASE_NAME

influxctl database update \
  --retention-period 30d \
  --max-tables 500 \
  --max-columns 250 \
  DATABASE_NAME

influxctl database list

influxctl database delete <DATABASE_NAME>