> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.blnkfinance.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Data management

> Configure object-storage archiving and monitoring persistence for your production license deployment.

Configure how Plane backs up and retains ledger data and instance telemetry outside the control-plane database.

Connect an S3-compatible bucket so Lake can archive eligible older transactions, balances, ledgers, and identities into verified Parquet files while hot Postgres stays lean, and so Monitoring can persist traces, metrics, and logs captured from connected instances.

***

## Cold storage

Configure object-storage archiving for your Lake service. When enabled, Lake copies eligible older instance data into your configured S3-compatible bucket as verified Parquet files, keeps archive indexes in sync, and leaves hot database rows untouched unless purge is explicitly enabled.

```dotenv .env wrap theme={"system"}
LAKE_ENABLED=true
LAKE_ARCHIVER_ENABLED=true
LAKE_S3_BUCKET=your-bucket
LAKE_S3_ENDPOINT=https://your-s3-endpoint
LAKE_S3_ACCESS_KEY_ID=
LAKE_S3_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=
LAKE_S3_REGION=auto
LAKE_S3_PATH_STYLE=true
```

| Environment variable        | Description                                                                                                                                  |
| :-------------------------- | :------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `LAKE_ENABLED`              | Turns on the lake feature in Plane.                                                                                                          |
| `LAKE_ARCHIVER_ENABLED`     | Starts the background worker that archives eligible old rows.                                                                                |
| `LAKE_S3_BUCKET`            | Object storage bucket where Parquet archive files and index files are stored.                                                                |
| `LAKE_S3_ENDPOINT`          | S3-compatible endpoint (e.g., DigitalOcean Spaces, R2, MinIO, or AWS S3 endpoint).                                                           |
| `LAKE_S3_ACCESS_KEY_ID`     | Access key used by Plane to write/read archive objects.                                                                                      |
| `LAKE_S3_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY` | Secret key used with the access key. Store this as a secret.                                                                                 |
| `LAKE_S3_REGION`            | Region passed to the S3 client. `auto` is useful for S3-compatible providers.                                                                |
| `LAKE_S3_PATH_STYLE`        | When set to `true`, uses path-style object URLs (`endpoint/bucket/object-key`) instead of virtual-host style (`bucket.endpoint/object-key`). |

***

## Monitoring & observability

Configure object-storage persistence for your Monitoring service. When set, Monitoring stores captured monitoring payloads in your configured S3-compatible bucket so they can be retained and retrieved outside the control-plane database.

```dotenv .env wrap theme={"system"}
MONITORING_STORAGE_S3_BUCKET=
MONITORING_STORAGE_S3_ENDPOINT=
MONITORING_STORAGE_S3_ACCESS_KEY_ID=
MONITORING_STORAGE_S3_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=
```

| Environment variable                      | Description                                                                        |
| :---------------------------------------- | :--------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `MONITORING_STORAGE_S3_BUCKET`            | Object storage bucket where Monitoring payloads are stored.                        |
| `MONITORING_STORAGE_S3_ENDPOINT`          | S3-compatible endpoint (e.g., DigitalOcean Spaces, R2, MinIO, or AWS S3 endpoint). |
| `MONITORING_STORAGE_S3_ACCESS_KEY_ID`     | Access key used by Monitoring to write/read stored payloads.                       |
| `MONITORING_STORAGE_S3_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY` | Secret key used with the access key. Store this as a secret.                       |