Retention
Seven, 30, 90 or 365 days. Longer retention costs more because it consumes real storage, and it keeps deleted data around for longer too.
Retention is how long your backups are kept. You choose it per service, from four periods, and it can be changed on a running service.
It controls two things that pull in opposite directions, so it is worth a minute rather than a default.
The options
| Retention | Notes |
|---|---|
| 7 days | |
| 30 days | The default for a new service |
| 90 days | |
| 365 days |
The periods have no product names, so ask us about "the 30-day policy" rather than about a tier name. There is nothing in the platform for a tier name to refer to.
Longer retention costs more because it consumes real storage across two repositories. The difference in price reflects the cost of that storage.
Choose it
Retention is set on the Protection step when you create a service. See create your first service.
What retention actually controls
Two things at once:
- How far back you can recover. A 7-day policy means a deletion discovered on day nine is not recoverable from backup.
- How long deleted data persists. Data you delete from your database stays in backups until its retention window expires. That is a property of backups, not a Balta decision, but it is one we state plainly because it affects your own retention obligations.
Choose with both in mind. A long retention is good for recovery and is a longer tail of personal data you are responsible for.
Changing it
Increasing retention applies from the change forward. It does not resurrect backups that have already expired.
Decreasing it expires anything now outside the new window, and the interface says how much that is before you confirm.
Enforcement
Retention is enforced automatically by repository policy, executed by a dedicated lifecycle identity. No database host has the ability to expire a backup. That separation is what makes "a compromised database cannot delete its own backup history" true.
What you will see
Retention is one of the four readings on the service's Backups tab, beside RPO exposure, Last backup and Last verified restore. The base backups listed below them go back as far as the period allows and no further.
Troubleshooting
A point in time you expected is not offered. It is outside the retention window. Retention is the outer bound on how far back point-in-time recovery can reach.
You reduced retention and lost backups. Decreasing expires anything outside the new window immediately. There is no undo, and increasing it again does not bring them back.
You need data kept longer than 365 days. Take a pg_dump and keep it yourself. See
exporting.