Model volumes, retention, compression, and replicas quickly. Adjust hot, warm, cold, and archive pricing rates. Export results to CSV or PDF for reporting anytime.
| Scenario | GB/day | Retention | Compression | Replicas | Total (monthly) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small app logs | 5 | 14 days | 0.40 | 2 | Varies by your prices |
| Security analytics | 50 | 90 days | 0.30 | 3 | Varies by tier split |
| High traffic platform | 250 | 30 days | 0.35 | 2 | Varies by scan and egress |
Use the calculator to replace “Varies” with your computed totals.
Daily volume and retention set raw retained size. Compression, indexing, replication, and overhead convert that estimate into billable capacity. Pull seven days of collector metrics, use the median GB/day, and model peak days separately. Reduce noisy sources, tighten retention for low value streams, and sample verbose debug events in normal operations. A 10% drop in daily GB reduces storage and ingest together. Index percent often ranges from 5 to 20 by workload.
Hot storage supports frequent searches, dashboards, and alert correlation. Warm fits weekly investigations and operational reporting. Cold and archive support compliance and long tail incident reviews, usually with slower retrieval. A common split is 40–60% across hot plus warm, then the remainder in cold and archive. Move older data to cheaper tiers using age based policies. Revisit the split quarterly as traffic and on call usage change.
Many platforms bill ingest per gigabyte and queries by gigabytes scanned. High cardinality fields, wide time ranges, and unbounded searches increase scanned data. Use filters, partitions, and scoped indexes to keep scan volume predictable. Track average scan GB/day and revise after major launches and new dashboards. If scan volume doubles, query spend can exceed storage even when retention stays constant. Default time windows and saved searches help cap scans.
Replication improves durability but multiplies stored bytes, so 3× replication can outweigh compression gains. Overhead covers metadata, small object padding, and internal bookkeeping that appears in billable bytes. Index size reflects searchable structures and can rise with structured JSON. Review field lists, drop unused attributes, and avoid indexing large free text unless required. Use billable reports to calibrate overhead and index ratios.
Start with realistic volumes, then validate retention by log type. Set a target monthly spend and tune tier percentages and prices to match. Compare costs before and after compression changes or replica adjustments. Export CSV for finance and attach the PDF to approvals. Run scenarios for peak events and audits to size headroom. Estimate separate totals for production, staging, and development environments with confidence today.
It is compressed size divided by raw size. For example, 0.35 means 1 GB raw becomes 0.35 GB stored. Use observations from your pipeline, not marketing estimates.
If your percentages do not sum to 100, the calculator rescales them proportionally. This avoids accidental under or over allocation and keeps cost estimates consistent.
Start with platform usage reports, or multiply average query scan by daily query count. Then set a conservative buffer for incident spikes and new dashboards.
No. Replication improves availability and durability within the service, but it may not satisfy recovery objectives. For strict requirements, validate snapshot, export, or backup features separately.
Overhead models extra billed capacity from metadata, segment headers, small file padding, and internal storage structures. If your platform reports “billable bytes,” use that ratio to tune overhead.
Run separate scenarios for production, staging, and development. Then sum monthly totals, or apply a blended tier split. Keep retention distinct because compliance rules often vary.
Important Note: All the Calculators listed in this site are for educational purpose only and we do not guarentee the accuracy of results. Please do consult with other sources as well.