docs/source/includes/common-minio-tiering.rst

Use the mc ilm rule add command to create a new transition rule for the bucket. The following example configures transition after the specified number of calendar days:

mc ilm rule add ALIAS/BUCKET \
--transition-tier TIERNAME \
--transition-days DAYS \
--noncurrent-transition-days NONCURRENT_DAYS
--noncurrent-transition-tier TIERNAME

The example above specifies the following arguments:

Argument	Description
ALIAS <mc ilm rule add ALIAS>	Specify the alias <mc alias> of the MinIO deployment for which you are creating the lifecycle management rule.
BUCKET <mc ilm rule add ALIAS>	Specify the full path to the bucket for which you are creating the lifecycle management rule.
TIERNAME <mc ilm rule add --transition-tier>	The remote storage tier to which MinIO transitions objects. Specify the remote storage tier name created in the previous step. If you want to transition noncurrent object versions to a distinct remote tier, specify a different tier name for ~mc ilm rule add --noncurrent-transition-tier.
DAYS <mc ilm rule add --transition-days>	The number of calendar days after which MinIO marks an object as eligible for transition. Specify the number of days as an integer, e.g. 30 for 30 days.
NONCURRENT_DAYS <mc ilm rule add --noncurrent-transition-days>	The number of calendar days after which MinIO marks a noncurrent object version as eligible for transition. MinIO specifically measures the time since an object became non-current instead of the object creation time. Specify the number of days as an integer, e.g. 90 for 90 days. Omit this value to ignore noncurrent object versions. This option has no effect on non-versioned buckets.

This step creates users and policies on the MinIO deployment for supporting lifecycle management operations. You can skip this step if the deployment already has users with the necessary .

The following example uses Alpha as a placeholder alias <mc alias> for the MinIO deployment. Replace this value with the appropriate alias for the MinIO deployment on which you are configuring lifecycle management rules. Replace the password LongRandomSecretKey with a long, random, and secure secret key as per your organizations best practices for password generation.

wget -O - https://min.io/docs/minio/linux/examples/LifecycleManagementAdmin.json | \
mc admin policy add Alpha LifecycleAdminPolicy /dev/stdin
mc admin user add Alpha alphaLifecycleAdmin LongRandomSecretKey
mc admin policy set Alpha LifecycleAdminPolicy user=alphaLifecycleAdmin

This example assumes that the specified aliases have the necessary permissions for creating policies and users on the deployment. See minio-users and MinIO Policy Based Access Control <minio-policy> for more complete documentation on MinIO users and policies respectively.

MinIO requires exclusive access to the transitioned data on the remote storage tier. MinIO ignores any objects in the remote bucket or bucket prefix not explicitly managed by the MinIO deployment. Automatic transition and transparent object retrieval depend on the following assumptions:

• No external mutation, migration, or deletion of objects on the remote storage.
• No lifecycle management rules (e.g. transition or expiration) on the remote storage bucket.

MinIO stores all transitioned objects in the remote storage bucket or resource under a unique per-deployment prefix value. This value is not intended to support identifying the source deployment from the backend. MinIO supports an additional optional human-readable prefix when configuring the remote target, which may facilitate operations related to diagnostics, maintenance, or disaster recovery.

MinIO recommends specifying this optional prefix for remote storage tiers which contain other data, including transitioned objects from other MinIO deployments. This tutorial includes the necessary syntax for setting this prefix.

MinIO tiering behavior depends on the remote storage returning objects immediately (milliseconds to seconds) upon request. MinIO therefore cannot support remote storage which requires rehydration, wait periods, or manual intervention.

MinIO creates metadata for each transitioned object that identifies its location on the remote storage. Applications cannot trivially identify and access a transitioned object independent of MinIO. Availability of the transitioned data therefore depends on the same core protections that erasure coding <minio-erasure-coding> and distributed deployment topologies provide for all objects on the MinIO deployment. Using object transition does not provide any additional business continuity or disaster recovery benefits.

Workloads that require BC/DR (Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery) protections should implement MinIO Server-Side replication <minio-bucket-replication-serverside>. Replication ensures objects remains preserved on the remote replication site, such that you can resynchronize from the remote in the event of partial or total data loss. See minio-replication-behavior-resync for more complete documentation on using replication to recover after partial or total data loss.