Intra-day log space management

["Simon E. Devlin" <si...@7layerforensics.com>]

Hi all,
 
Hopefully someone will have some helpful advice for me.  I'm looking for options for managing log space requirements predominently on an intra-day basis (within the same 24hr period).
 
One of the qestions I'm being asked about an app I've written is what the log space requirements are which is a difficult question to answer.  Normally, they're pretty small but on one occasion recently over 5GB in one day were written (all of which was valid - at least by our definition, if not actually useful!)
 
The logs themselves aren't really critical in that the all messages are also stored delivered centrally and these are viewed more as a 'backup' than anything else.  Space management is probably more important here.
 
Before I start playing with variations on the rolling features (above and beyond simple date based rolling), what have other people done where aggresive space management is required?  Rolling by the hour might be acceptable, as would compression after roll.  Ideally I'd like to be able to say "Never use more than X space and truncate, prune, delete whatever as appripriate" but I'm guessing that's easier said that done.

All ideas appreciated.
 
Simon