docs/source/administration/object-management/object-lifecycle-management.rst

Object Lifecycle Management

minio

Table of Contents

• MinIO Object Lifecycle Management Part I
• MinIO Object Lifecycle Management Part II
• MinIO Object Lifecycle Management Lab

Use MinIO Object Lifecycle Management to create rules for time or date based automatic transition or expiry of objects. For object transition, MinIO automatically moves the object to a configured remote storage tier. For object expiry, MinIO automatically deletes the object.

MinIO derives it's behavior and syntax from S3 lifecycle <object-lifecycle-mgmt.html> for compatibility in migrating workloads and lifecycle rules from S3 to MinIO. For example, you can export S3 lifecycle management rules and import them into MinIO or vice-versa. MinIO uses JSON to describe lifecycle management rules and may require conversion to or from XML as part of importing S3 lifecycle rules.

Object Transition ("Tiering")

MinIO supports creating object transition lifecycle management rules, where MinIO can automatically move an object to a remote storage "tier". MinIO supports any of the following remote tier targets:

• MinIO <minio-lifecycle-management-transition-to-minio>
• Amazon S3 <minio-lifecycle-management-transition-to-s3>
• Google Cloud Storage <minio-lifecycle-management-transition-to-gcs>
• Microsoft Azure Blob Storage <minio-lifecycle-management-transition-to-azure>

MinIO object transition supports use cases like moving aged data from MinIO clusters in private or public cloud infrastructure to low-cost private or public cloud storage solutions. Directory objects, which are 0-byte objects with a name ending in /, do not tier. MinIO manages retrieving tiered objects on-the-fly without any additional application-side logic.

Use the mc ilm tier add command to create a remote target for tiering data to that target. You can then use the mc ilm rule add --transition-days command to transition objects to that tier after a specified number of calendar days.

RELEASE.2022-11-10T18-20-21Z

You can verify the tiering status of an object using mc ls against the bucket or bucket prefix. The output includes the storage tier of each object:

$ mc ls play/mybucket
[2022-11-08 11:30:24 PST]    52MB  STANDARD log-data.csv
[2022-11-09 12:20:18 PST]    120MB WARM event-2022-11-09.mp4

• STANDARD marks objects stored on the MinIO deployment.
• WARM marks objects stored on the remote tier with matching name.

Important

MinIO Object Transition supports cost-saving strategies around moving older or aged data to cost-optimized remote storage tiers, such as cloud storage or high-density HDD storage.

MinIO Object Transition does not provide backup and recovery functionality. You cannot use the remote tier as a recovery source in the event of data loss in MinIO.

Use either site replication <minio-site-replication-overview> or bucket replication <minio-bucket-replication> to support backup/recovery or BC/DR (Business Continuity / Disaster Recovery) requirements.

Exclusive Access to Remote Data

Availability of Remote Data

Versioned Buckets

MinIO adopts S3 behavior <intro-lifecycle-rules.html#intro-lifecycle-rules-actions> for transition rules on versioned buckets <minio-bucket-versioning>. Specifically, MinIO by default applies the transition operation to the current object version.

To transition noncurrent object versions, specify the ~mc ilm rule add --noncurrent-transition-days and ~mc ilm rule add --noncurrent-transition-tier options when creating the transition rule.

Object Expiration

MinIO lifecycle management supports expiring objects on a bucket. Object "expiration" involves performing a DELETE operation on the object. For example, you can create a lifecycle management rule to expire any object older than 365 days.

Use mc ilm rule add --expire-days to expire objects after a specified number of calendar days.

For buckets with replication <minio-bucket-replication> configured, MinIO does not replicate objects deleted by a lifecycle management expiration rule. See minio-replication-behavior-delete for more information.

Versioned Buckets

MinIO adopts S3 behavior <intro-lifecycle-rules.html#intro-lifecycle-rules-actions> for expiration rules on versioned buckets <minio-bucket-versioning>. MinIO has two specific default behaviors for versioned buckets:

• MinIO applies the expiration option to only the current object version by creating a DeleteMarker as is normal with versioned delete.

  To expire noncurrent object versions, specify the ~mc ilm rule add --noncurrent-expire-days option when creating the expiration rule.

• MinIO does not expire DeleteMarkers even if no other versions of that object exist.

  To expire delete markers when there are no remaining versions for that object, specify the ~mc ilm rule add --expire-delete-marker option when creating the expiration rule.

• To expire all versions of an object after a specified period of days, use the ~mc ilm rule add --expire-all-object-versions flag with the ~mc ilm rule add --expire-days flag. This permits the permanent deletion of the object after the specified number of days pass.

Lifecycle Management Object Scanner

MinIO uses a built-in scanner <minio-concepts-scanner> to actively check objects against all configured lifecycle management rules.

The scanner is a low-priority process that yields to high I/O (Input / Output) workloads to prevent performance spikes triggered by rule timing. The scanner may therefore not detect an object as eligible for a configured transition or expiration lifecycle rule until after the lifecycle rule period has passed.

/administration/object-management/transition-objects-to-minio.rst /administration/object-management/transition-objects-to-s3.rst /administration/object-management/transition-objects-to-gcs.rst /administration/object-management/transition-objects-to-azure.rst /administration/object-management/create-lifecycle-management-expiration-rule.rst