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9. How do retention policies work for different WCF service types?

Part of the WCF Diagnostics Tracing troubleshooting and FAQ guide.

Nodinite applies retention policies per Message Type rather than globally, giving you granular control over how long WCF trace events are kept for each service category. This approach maximizes storage optimization while meeting regulatory compliance requirements.

Retention Policy by Service Category

Configure retention in Message Type settings for each category:

  • Financial transactions (InvoiceProcessing, PaymentRequest, TaxCalculation) — 7 years retention (regulatory compliance)
  • Order processing (PurchaseOrderSubmission, OrderConfirmation) — 3 years retention (audit trail)
  • Debug traces (HeartbeatCheck, HealthMonitor) — 30 days retention (troubleshooting only)

SQL Server automatically purges events older than each Message Type retention policy via a scheduled nightly data purge job. No manual cleanup is required.

Storage Optimization Results

By combining long retention for financial transactions with short retention for debug traces, you achieve significant storage optimization. A typical deployment retains financial transactions for 7 years alongside debug traces for 30 days, delivering up to 95% disk space savings compared to applying a blanket 7-year policy to all events.

Next Steps