Open Stack

It seems that every release, there is more and more emphasis on upgradability. This is a good thing, I've love to see production users easily go from old to new.

As an operator, I've seen first hand the results of neglecting the databases that openstack creates. If we intend to have users go year-over-year with upgrades, we're going to expect them to carry huge databases around. 

Just in my lab, I have over 100000 deleted instances in the last two months.
Frankly, I'm not convinced that simply archiving deleted rows is the best idea. Sure, gets your production databases and tables to a manageable size, but you're simply hoarding old data.

As an operator, I'd prefer to have time based criteria over number of rows, too.
I envision something like `nova-manage db purge [days]` where we can leave it up to the administrator to decide how much of their old data (if any) they'd be OK losing.

Think about data destruction guidelines too, some companies require old data be destroyed when not needed, others require maintaining it. 
We can easily provide both here.

I've drafted a simple blueprint https://blueprints.launchpad.net/nova/+spec/database-purge

I've love some input from the community.
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