Scenario

Lifecycle management is applicable to the following common scenarios:

• Periodically uploaded log files may require retention for a week or a month. They should be deleted upon expiration.

• Certain files experience frequent access for a specific duration. Following this period, they should be transitioned to Infrequent Access (IA) or Archive storage, or alternatively, deleted.

• Some data is uploaded to ZOS for archival purposes, including compliance with regulatory requirements, such as archiving digital media, financial and medical records, original genome sequence data, and long-term database backups.

• A substantial volume of files need to be deleted from a bucket at a time. Manual deletion of a substantial volume of files is time-consuming and labor-intensive, with limitations on the number of files. In such cases, you can configure lifecycle policies to automatically delete them at regular intervals.

In the scenarios mentioned above, defining lifecycle management policies enables efficient data management.

Note:

You can configure a maximum of 1000 lifecycle management policies.
The minimum storage duration for IA storage is 30 days, and that for Archive storage is 90 days. If you switch to another storage type before the minimum duration expires, you will continue to be billed until the minimum duration is reached.
Limits on the switch of storage type:
You can configure lifecycle management policies to automatically transition objects from Standard storage to IA or Archive storage. However, moving objects from IA or Archive storage back to Standard storage requires manual intervention.
The automatic transition from Standard or IA storage to Archive storage is supported. To transition objects from Archive storage to Standard or IA storage, you must manually restore the objects before moving them to another type of storage.
Lifecycle management policies cannot be configured to transition objects in a multi-AZ bucket to Archive storage.

Lifecycle Rules

Lifecycle management typically includes two elements:

• Policy: Define the scope of lifecycle management.

o By prefix: Configure it by specifying the prefix of object names. Those objects containing the specified prefix will be subject to lifecycle management.

o By bucket: Configure lifecycle management for an entire bucket. All objects within the object will be subject to lifecycle management.

• Time: Define the transition time and target storage type. You can specify a date or a period post-update for objects to be transferred to IA or Archive storage or automatically deleted.

o Transition to IA storage: Specify a date or a period post-update for objects to be transferred to IA storage.

o Transition to Archive storage: Specify a date or a period post-update for objects to be transferred to Archive storage.

o Deletion upon expiration: Specify a date or a period post-update for objects to be automatically deleted.

• Time setting limitations:

o For a single transition, the designated time must be one day after the setting time.

o For multiple transitions, each transition time must follow the sequence: transitioning to IA storage, then to Archive storage, and finally, deletion, with each time being later than the preceding one.

Usage

Configuring Lifecycle Management	Reference Documentation
Console	For more information, seeLifecycle Management.
ZOSBrowser	For more information, seeZOSBrowser.
SDK	ZOS supports various SDKs. For more information about code examples, seeDeveloper Documentation.

Zettabyte Object Storage

Lifecycle Management