Manage databases

An InfluxDB 3 Enterprise database is a named location where time series data is stored. Each database can contain multiple tables.

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.

By default, data does not expire. When you create a database, you can optionally set a retention period. The minimum practical retention period is 1 hour (1h).

Database retention periods can be updated after creation. For tables within a database, you can set table-specific retention periods that override the database retention period.

For complete details about retention periods, including duration formats, precedence rules, and deletion behavior, see Data retention in InfluxDB 3 Enterprise.

Database, table, and column limits

InfluxDB 3 Enterprise places the following limits on databases, tables, and columns:

Database limit

Maximum number of databases: 100

Table limit

Maximum number of tables across all databases: 10000

InfluxDB 3 Enterprise limits the number of tables you can have across all databases to 10000 by default. You can configure the table limit using the --num-table-limit configuration option. InfluxDB doesn’t limit how many tables you can have in an individual database, as long as the total across all databases is below the limit.

Having more tables affects your InfluxDB 3 Enterprise installation in the following ways:

Column limit

Maximum number of columns per table: 500

Each row must include a time column, with the remaining columns representing tags and fields. As a result, by default, a table can have one time column and up to 499 combined 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.

You can configure the maximum number of columns per table using the num-total-columns-per-table-limit configuration option.

Higher numbers of columns has the following side-effects:

# influxdb3 CLI
influxdb3 create database \
  --retention-period 30d \
  
DATABASE_NAME

# HTTP API
curl --request POST "http://localhost:8181/api/v3/configure/database" \
  --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer AUTH_TOKEN" \
  --data '{
    "db": "
DATABASE_NAME
",
    "retention_period": "30d"
  }'

# influxdb3 CLI
influxdb3 show databases

# HTTP API
curl --request GET "http://localhost:8181/api/v3/configure/database" \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer 
AUTH_TOKEN
"

# influxdb3 CLI
influxdb3 delete database 
DATABASE_NAME

# HTTP API
curl --request DELETE "http://localhost:8181/api/v3/configure/database?db=
DATABASE_NAME
" \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer 
AUTH_TOKEN
"