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P4 Server Administration Documentation | 2025.2

# Limit storage of archive revisions

Recall that server files have two portions: the file data itself — known as the archive or archive file — and the file’s metadata — information describing the file, such as its size and its owner.

Because digital asset archives take up substantial storage space, it would be convenient to control how many revisions of the archive you store locally when you fetch the digital asset files to your personal server. Moreover, because source code doesn’t impose this same storage burden, it would be equally helpful to control the source code archive files separately from the digital assets when fetching quantities of archives.

The `ArchiveLimits` field in the personal server’s remote spec allows you to do just this. Using `ArchiveLimits:`, you specify how many revisions of a file or files archive(s) you want to store locally with a fetch. This is regulated at the level of one or more files, so if you store your digital asset files in separate subdirectories from source code files, you can impose the archive limits on just the digital asset files, leaving source code files unaffected.

ArchiveLimits: does not affect the fetched files' metadata; the fetch stores metadata for the entire history of the files.

If you don’t set `ArchiveLimits:` the server defaults to storing all archive revisions.

ArchiveLimits: are applied during the `p4 fetch` operation only. However, since they apply to `p4 fetch`, they also affect `p4 clone` if they are set in the remote spec invoked by `p4 clone`.

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