Should I store traces for 7 days or 30 days

It depends on what you need them for, but a good default is:

• 7 days if you mostly use traces for debugging recent issues, want to keep costs lower, and don’t need much historical analysis.
• 30 days if you need to investigate recurring or intermittent problems, compare behavior over time, or support slower incident response and trend analysis.

Simple rule of thumb

Choose 7 days if:

• you’re cost-sensitive
• high trace volume
• traces are only needed for short-term troubleshooting
• you have logs/metrics that cover longer-term needs

Choose 30 days if:

• incidents can take days or weeks to surface
• you need to correlate with monthly releases or traffic patterns
• multiple teams may need access later
• you don’t want to lose data before someone investigates

Practical recommendation

If you’re unsure, 30 days is usually the safer operational choice, but 7 days is often enough for mature systems with strong alerting and good logs.

If you want, I can help you choose based on your:

• trace volume
• storage budget
• compliance needs
• incident response workflow