Configure RRD data retention

[dogganos]

I can't find any mention in the documentation or the config file about how much RRDs are allowed to grow, either in disk space, or in time. How much is that time/space? Can I configure it? What happens when processed nfdump files are deleted from the disk? RRDs stay intact?

[Abyss777]

I have a similar question

I configured retention of my pcap data. But RRDs do not reflects this.
I see graphs of old (already deleted) data. It is not a big problem.
But the problem is if I request flows or stats such old data. I get

[Wed Oct 29 17:00:07.994693 2025] [php:error] [pid 7174:tid 7174] [client 10.0.12.3:51656] PHP Fatal error:  Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in /var/www/html/backend/processor/Nfdump.php on line 251, referer: https://netflow.domain.local/frontend/

I believe it should be empty data but not 30 seconds timeout and error.

[mbolli]

@dogganos upcoming version will allow to configure how many years of data should be stored. generally RRD are very space-efficient, as they're fixed in size.
@Abyss777 you're mixing up two data types. RRD data is only for the graph. flows and stats are basically a nfdump GUI which iterate directly over nfcapd files (which can take a long time depending on how large the date span is and how many sources are queried).