Storages & Retention

Storage backends

Recordings, exported clips, and screenshots are written to a storage backend. Manage backends under Settings → Storages. The default is the local filesystem under /var/lib/altavms/; the backend is pluggable. Operations against network-backed storage are guarded by timeouts and a circuit breaker, so an unresponsive mount cannot stall recording or export workers.

Default layout:

Content	Path
Database	/var/lib/altavms/altavms.db
Clips	/var/lib/altavms/clips/{camera_id}/{clip_id}.mp4
Screenshots	/var/lib/altavms/screenshots/{camera_id}/{screenshot_id}.jpg

Alta archive storages

The Settings → Storages page also lists the archive storages defined on your Alta servers, where recorded footage lives. You can delete an archive storage from here.

Danger

Deleting an archive storage detaches every camera that was recording to it (their recording is turned off) and, on the Alta side, permanently removes the archived footage stored there. There is no undo — export anything you need as a clip first.

Retention

A cleanup worker runs on a schedule and removes data past its retention window — clips, screenshots, events, and logs each have their own policy. This keeps disk usage bounded automatically. The audit-log retention period is configurable under Settings → Storages and defaults to one year.

Event retention is keyed on when the event was created — resolving an event does not extend how long it is kept.

Keep /var/lib/altavms/ on durable storage and include it in your backups.