Altinity / Altinity/altinityknowledgebase
Document GCS bucket retention policy impact on ClickHouse storage
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Description
Problem
The current GCS documentation (content/en/altinity-kb-integrations/altinity-kb-google-s3-gcs.md) only covers basic setup (HMAC keys, endpoint configuration) but doesn't mention an important operational caveat.
Missing Information
When a GCS bucket has a retention policy enabled, objects cannot be deleted until the retention period expires. This causes issues with ClickHouse because it regularly deletes data during:
- Part merges - old parts are removed after merge
- Mutations - replaced data is deleted
- TTL expiration - expired data is purged
If the bucket retention policy prevents deletion, old data accumulates and storage grows exponentially, leading to unexpected costs and potential operational issues.
Suggested Addition
Add a warning/note to the GCS documentation explaining:
- Bucket retention policies prevent ClickHouse from deleting obsolete data
- This causes continuous storage growth
- Recommendation to disable retention policy or use a bucket without one for ClickHouse storage
If this seems like a good enhancement, I'd be happy to take this up and submit a PR.
Contributor guide
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First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Read content/en/altinity-kb-integrations/altinity-kb-google-s3-gcs.md and review its existing GCS setup guidance. Add a warning explaining how retention policies block ClickHouse deletion during merges, mutations, and TTL expiration, and recommend using a bucket without a retention policy. Done means the storage-growth and operational-cost risk is clearly documented.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- clickhouse, google-cloud
- Domain
- databases, documentation
- Issue type
- Documentation
- Difficulty
- 1/5
- Estimated time
- Under an hour
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Clearly specified
- Newbie friendliness
- 72/100