topic Re: Configure Soft-Delete Retention Period of Unity Catalog Managed Table in Data Engineering

Configure Soft-Delete Retention Period of Unity Catalog Managed Table

guiferviz — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 21:13:34 GMT

According to the docs,

When a managed table is dropped from Unity Catalog, its underlying data is deleted from your cloud tenant within 30 days.

Can I configure the retention period? Is executing DELETE FROM my_table followed by VACUUM my_table RETAIN 0 HOURS the only method to remove managed tables without retaining the data for 30 days?

Re: Configure Soft-Delete Retention Period of Unity Catalog Managed Table

KaranamS — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 01:09:53 GMT

Hi @guiferviz ,

Yes, that is correct! The only way is to use DELETE and VACCUM commands. For managed tables, the default retention period is set to 30‑days. Unity Catalog enforces this to provide an additional safety net against accidental data loss, and that period isn’t configurable.

Re: Configure Soft-Delete Retention Period of Unity Catalog Managed Table

guiferviz — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 07:23:14 GMT

Thank you for confirming @KaranamS! I hope it becomes configurable in the future.