Gm,
how often do relays purge data ?
How does the relay owner decides what data to keep for an indefinite period?
What is the amount of storage required to run a relay ?
How many relays are currently running?
Thanks :)
Discussion
Good morning ✌️🧡
Good morning ☕️ I think it depends on the owner, and I have 2tb for my private relay, nostr.band says there are 2820 relays… probably most are private 
2TB on a private relay?! I was thinking private relays store only your own stuff, and images/videos are hosted by the relay, right?
So why yours is so big?
Are you backibg up all the post from all people you follow? And if it's just text, how can it be so big?
Because it was cheap and since Nostr is so new with an infinite amount of possibilities, who’s saying I’m not going to need the storage someday.
The relay count is wrong btw, thats the total number of relays it has aggregated, not relays online.
Probably and that is also only over 2 months, but it’s better than just assuming a random number
nostr:nprofile1qqswwud0pvzu362lehm0av6sq4zd97cue5uy0z8f7jgtk0hz368dvmcpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduhszxmhwden5te0wa5x2ct59e5xzurs096xzan9wfhzucm09uqsuamnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dshsdms043 is working on a relay monitor. What you store is up to you. I'd recommend checking my own implementation, grain 🌾. It's very configurable and has purging built in that you can fine tune with extensive whitelisting capabilities. Not much storage is needed unless you're running a mega relay and never purge. I have a couple dozen people whitelisted and it's using like 35mb. My relay also purges events from all non whitelisted users but allows anyone to write to it. When I implement WoT I'll also have a configuration for excluding WoT from purging. I had a lot of the same questions and no implementation was as configurable as Id like it to be without writing a bunch of external code, most likely in something I'm not proficient in. So I made my own implementation. GitHub is on my profile. There's also info about grain on my website linked in my profile. I'd be happy to help you set I up too if you'd like to try it.
thanks bud, what are the hardware requirements for this ?
It takes very little resources from my testing. There are configurable resources limits. 😉
any link for the resources ? thanks
Oh I thought you meant computer resources. All you need to run grain is mongoDB server (community server linked in the readme) and grain itself. Check releases on GitHub for the latest binaries. There are binaries for both windows and Linux. Once mongo is running, all you need to do is run grain. It'll initialize the configs for you when you run it. Then you can change the configs to suit your use case.
About tree fiddy
Most relays administrators setup a relay then never touch it. So they rarely purge. Also the fact that there is no easy way to purge specific content. The relay software is extremely lacking in features and all has to be done by the Linux CLI.
There is only about 20 main relays that everyone uses and they are all full of spam because they are free. A free relay uses a crazy amount of storage after a while since spammers connect to them and spam away.
There is only a few relays which the administrators are actively involved and improving the software and a few paid relays which are good.
There is thousands and thousands of relays but hard to find a good list. Most of the lists are not updated or don't work. I've been adding as many relays as I can. I also run my own relay.
thanks , this was helpful.
~915 clearnet relays
~500 for relays (many of them hybrid)
~? I2p relays