Help Center/ Distributed Message Service for Kafka/ Drawer/ Creating a Topic/ Aging Time
Updated on 2025-06-19 GMT+08:00
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Aging Time

Parameter Explanation

  • Aging Time

    How long messages will be preserved in the topic. Messages older than this period will be deleted and cannot be consumed.

FAQs

Why Are Aged Messages Not Deleted?

Possible cause 1: Each partition of a topic consists of multiple segment files of the same size (500 MB). When the size of messages stored in a segment file reaches 500 MB, another segment file is created. Kafka deletes segment files instead of messages. Kafka requires that at least one segment file be reserved for storing messages. If the segment file in use contains aged messages, the segment file will not be deleted. Therefore, the aged messages will remain.

Solution: Wait until the segment is no longer in use or delete the topic where messages have reached their retention period.

Possible cause 2: In a topic, there is a message whose CreateTime is a future time. For example, assume that it is January 1, and the CreateTime is February 1. The message will not be aged after 72 hours from now. As a result, messages created subsequently will also not be aged.

Solution: Delete the topic where the CreateTime of a message is a future time.

Parent Topic: Creating a Topic