delete TTL should be greater than cold storage move TTL

Error message

delete TTL should be greater than cold storage move TTL

What it means

Data must live on hot storage longer than the cold-storage move threshold, so toColdDuration must be strictly less than the overall delete TTL duration. If toColdParsed >= durationParsed the request is rejected.

Solutions

Make duration strictly greater than toColdDuration (e.g. duration=72h, toColdDuration=24h)
If you intended no cold tier, remove the coldStorage and toColdDuration params entirely
Re-read the semantics: duration = total retention before delete; toColdDuration = age at which data moves to cold

Example fix

// before
?type=traces&duration=24h&coldStorage=s3&toColdDuration=48h
// after
?type=traces&duration=72h&coldStorage=s3&toColdDuration=24h

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

del, _ := time.ParseDuration(duration)
move, _ := time.ParseDuration(toColdDuration)
if move >= del { return fmt.Errorf("toColdDuration must be < duration") }

Prevention

Derive toColdDuration from duration programmatically (e.g. duration/3) instead of hardcoding both
Alert on config review when either value changes

When it happens

Trigger: ?duration=24h&toColdDuration=24h, or ?duration=24h&toColdDuration=48h — any case where the move-to-cold age meets or exceeds the deletion age.

Common situations: Misreading which param is which and swapping them; incrementing retention duration without adjusting toColdDuration; equal-value configs.

Understand the failure class

Background: "invalid duration" / "failed to parse duration": why your timeout, interval, or TTL string is rejected and which formats each library accepts — this error's family across 32 libraries.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of SigNoz/signoz@5069bf80b0 (2026-08-28). Data as JSON: /api/errors/8ce9563cf891447d. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at pkg/query-service/app/parser.go:455

		return nil, fmt.Errorf("type param should be metrics|traces|logs, got %v", typeTTL)
	}

	// Validate the TTL duration.
	durationParsed, err := time.ParseDuration(delDuration)
	if err != nil || durationParsed.Seconds() <= 0 {
		return nil, fmt.Errorf("not a valid TTL duration %v", delDuration)
	}

	var toColdParsed time.Duration

	// If some cold storage is provided, validate the cold storage move TTL.
	if len(coldStorage) > 0 {
		toColdParsed, err = time.ParseDuration(toColdDuration)
		if err != nil || toColdParsed.Seconds() <= 0 {
			return nil, fmt.Errorf("not a valid toCold TTL duration %v", toColdDuration)
		}
		if toColdParsed.Seconds() != 0 && toColdParsed.Seconds() >= durationParsed.Seconds() {
			return nil, fmt.Errorf("delete TTL should be greater than cold storage move TTL")
		}
	}

	return &retentiontypes.TTLParams{
		Type:                  typeTTL,
		DelDuration:           int64(durationParsed.Seconds()),
		ColdStorageVolume:     coldStorage,
		ToColdStorageDuration: int64(toColdParsed.Seconds()),
	}, nil
}

func parseGetTTL(r *http.Request) (*retentiontypes.GetTTLParams, error) {

	typeTTL := r.URL.Query().Get("type")

	if len(typeTTL) == 0 {
		return nil, fmt.Errorf("type param cannot be empty from the query")
	} else {

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