This is an original planning guide. It is not a vendor manual, an official standard, or legal advice. Example addresses use documentation ranges. Review every command before you paste it.
What this hour is for
The calculator turns a daily volume and a number of days into disk. It does not collect logs. Write who asked for the retention. A year of logs you have no reason to hold is not a default.
One collector you administer. Secrets and payloads do not belong in the estimate as if they were free to keep. Say what you drop.
Do not point devices at the collector during the reading. A collector you do not run is out of scope.
The change you can finish
Apply nothing during the writing of the note. When the lab window opens, it is one change on the device named in the ticket. Read the draft, then the device, then decide.
Rollback is the file or the revision you saved first. You do not invent a rollback after the only copy is gone.
- Write daily volume.
- Write the retention and who asked.
- Read the disk.
- Say what you will not keep.
- Do not aim devices at a collector yet.
- Stop.
Mistakes that outlive the command
Log Retention and Storage Planning goes wrong in a small set of ways. The list is here so the ticket can forbid them before the window.
- Retention with no owner.
- Payloads kept by habit.
- A collector you do not administer.
- Devices repointed during the reading.
- A disk number with no volume behind it.
Decisions to write down
One decision for Log Retention and Storage Planning: Volume and days are written. An owner asked for the retention. The collector is yours. Nothing was repointed. And dropped content is named.
Checks before you call it done
Confirm this before you call the change done: The volume is written. The days are written. The disk is written. The owner is written. And no device was repointed. If one of those fails, stop.
Before you leave the device
Log Retention and Storage Planning ends when the hostname on the device matches the hostname in the ticket. If it does not, you are on the wrong box. Stop. A command that succeeded on the wrong box is not progress.
The draft stays a draft until a person has read the names in it. A generator does not log into the device and does not know which interface is the uplink. You delete a line that names a device, a zone, or a prefix you did not write down.
0.0.0.0/0 is not kept because a sample included it. A source you can say is the source you keep. 192.0.2.0/24, 198.51.100.0/24, 203.0.113.0/24, and 2001:db8::/32 are documentation. They belong in the note. They are not prefixes you type onto a production device because they appeared in a draft.
prompt-for-this is a reminder that a secret is missing. It is not a password, a key, a community string, or a pre-shared key you save in the ticket or in git. The real secret stays in the store.
One change is the window. A VLAN and a routing protocol and a VPN do not share it. If two things move and the result is wrong, you will not know which one did it. The next feature waits for its own page.
If the same step fails twice, stop for the day. The failure is the result. Adding a forum command beside a half-applied config produces a device nobody can rebuild. Restore the copy you took first.
A second person reads the device name and the change aloud. If they cannot find them in the ticket, the note is not done. Silence is not agreement. Then leave the device alone.
This page is a planning guide. It is not a vendor manual, not an official standard, and not a permission to touch a network you do not administer. The pillar guide owns the wider design. This page owns one lab proof.
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