Bucket Lifecycle Configuration Quickstart Guide

Enable object lifecycle configuration on buckets to setup automatic deletion of objects after a specified number of days or a specified date.

1. Prerequisites

Install MinIO - MinIO Quickstart Guide.
Install mc - mc Quickstart Guide

2. Enable bucket lifecycle configuration

Create a bucket lifecycle configuration which expires the objects under the prefix old/ on 2020-01-01T00:00:00.000Z date and the objects under temp/ after 7 days.
Enable bucket lifecycle configuration using mc:

$ mc ilm import play/testbucket <<EOF
{
    "Rules": [
        {
            "Expiration": {
                "Date": "2020-01-01T00:00:00.000Z"
            },
            "ID": "OldPictures",
            "Filter": {
                "Prefix": "old/"
            },
            "Status": "Enabled"
        },
        {
            "Expiration": {
                "Days": 7
            },
            "ID": "TempUploads",
            "Filter": {
                "Prefix": "temp/"
            },
            "Status": "Enabled"
        }
    ]
}
EOF

Lifecycle configuration imported successfully to `play/testbucket`.

List the current settings

$ mc ilm ls play/testbucket
     ID     |  Prefix  |  Enabled   | Expiry |  Date/Days   |  Transition  |    Date/Days     |  Storage-Class   |       Tags
------------|----------|------------|--------|--------------|--------------|------------------|------------------|------------------
OldPictures |   old/   |    ✓       |  ✓     |  1 Jan 2020  |     ✗        |                  |                  |
------------|----------|------------|--------|--------------|--------------|------------------|------------------|------------------
TempUploads |  temp/   |    ✓       |  ✓     |   7 day(s)   |     ✗        |                  |                  |
------------|----------|------------|--------|--------------|--------------|------------------|------------------|------------------

3. Activate ILM versioning features

This will only work with a versioned bucket, take a look at Bucket Versioning Guide for more understanding.

3.1 Automatic removal of non current objects versions

A non-current object version is a version which is not the latest for a given object. It is possible to set up an automatic removal of non-current versions when a version becomes older than a given number of days.

e.g., To scan objects stored under user-uploads/ prefix and remove versions older than one year.

{
    "Rules": [
        {
            "ID": "Removing all old versions",
            "Filter": {
                "Prefix": "users-uploads/"
            },
            "NoncurrentVersionExpiration": {
                "NoncurrentDays": 365
            },
            "Status": "Enabled"
        }
    ]
}

This JSON rule is equivalent to the following MinIO Client command:

mc ilm rule add --noncurrent-expire-days 365 --prefix "user-uploads/" myminio/mydata

3.2 Automatic removal of noncurrent versions keeping only most recent ones after noncurrent days

It is possible to configure automatic removal of older noncurrent versions keeping only the most recent N using NewerNoncurrentVersions.

e.g, To remove noncurrent versions of all objects keeping the most recent 5 noncurrent versions under the prefix user-uploads/ 30 days after they become noncurrent ,

{
    "Rules": [
        {
            "ID": "Keep only most recent 5 noncurrent versions",
            "Status": "Enabled",
            "Filter": {
                "Prefix": "users-uploads/"
            },
            "NoncurrentVersionExpiration": {
                "NewerNoncurrentVersions": 5,
                "NoncurrentDays": 30
            }
        }
    ]
}

This JSON rule is equivalent to the following MinIO Client command:

mc ilm rule add --noncurrent-expire-days 30 --noncurrent-expire-newer 5 myminio/mydata

3.2.a Automatic removal of noncurrent versions keeping only most recent ones immediately (MinIO only extension)

This is available only on MinIO as an extension to the NewerNoncurrentVersions feature. The following rule makes it possible to remove older noncurrent versions
of objects under the prefix user-uploads/ as soon as there are more than N noncurrent versions of an object.

{
    "Rules": [
        {
            "ID": "Keep only most recent 5 noncurrent versions",
            "Status": "Enabled",
            "Filter": {
                "Prefix": "users-uploads/"
            },
            "NoncurrentVersionExpiration": {
                "NewerNoncurrentVersions": 5
            }
        }
    ]
}

Note: This rule has an implicit zero NoncurrentDays, which makes the expiry of those 'extra' noncurrent versions immediate.

3.2.b Automatic removal of all versions (MinIO only extension)

This is available only on MinIO as an extension to the Expiration feature. The following rule makes it possible to remove all versions of an object under
the prefix user-uploads/ as soon as the latest object satisfies the expiration criteria.

NOTE: If the latest object is a delete marker then filtering based on Filter.Tags is ignored and
if the DELETE marker modTime satisfies the Expiration.Days then all versions of the object are
immediately purged.

{
    "Rules": [
        {
            "ID": "Purge all versions of an expired object",
            "Status": "Enabled",
            "Filter": {
                "Prefix": "users-uploads/"
            },
            "Expiration": {
                "Days": 7,
                "ExpiredObjectAllVersions": true
            }
        }
    ]
}

3.3 Automatic removal of delete markers with no other versions

When an object has only one version as a delete marker, the latter can be automatically removed after a certain number of days using the following configuration:

{
    "Rules": [
        {
            "ID": "Removing all delete markers",
            "Expiration": {
                "ExpiredObjectDeleteMarker": true
            },
            "Status": "Enabled"
        }
    ]
}

4. Enable ILM transition feature

In Erasure mode, MinIO supports tiering to public cloud providers such as GCS, AWS and Azure as well as to other MinIO clusters via the ILM transition feature. This will allow transitioning of older objects to a different cluster or the public cloud by setting up transition rules in the bucket lifecycle configuration. This feature enables applications to optimize storage costs by moving less frequently accessed data to a cheaper storage without compromising accessibility of data.

To transition objects in a bucket to a destination bucket on a different cluster, applications need to specify a transition tier defined on MinIO instead of storage class while setting up the ILM lifecycle rule.

To create a transition tier for transitioning objects to a prefix testprefix in azurebucket on Azure blob using mc:

 mc admin tier add azure source AZURETIER --endpoint https://blob.core.windows.net --access-key AZURE_ACCOUNT_NAME --secret-key AZURE_ACCOUNT_KEY  --bucket azurebucket --prefix testprefix1/

The admin user running this command needs the "admin:SetTier" and "admin:ListTier" permissions if not running as root.

Using above tier, set up a lifecycle rule with transition:

 mc ilm add --expiry-days 365 --transition-days 45 --storage-class "AZURETIER" myminio/srcbucket

Note: In the case of S3, it is possible to create a tier from MinIO running in EC2 to S3 using AWS role attached to EC2 as credentials instead of accesskey/secretkey:

mc admin tier add s3 source S3TIER --bucket s3bucket --prefix testprefix/ --use-aws-role

Once transitioned, GET or HEAD on the object will stream the content from the transitioned tier. In the event that the object needs to be restored temporarily to the local cluster, the AWS RestoreObject API can be utilized.

aws s3api restore-object --bucket srcbucket \
--key object \
--restore-request Days=3

4.1 Monitoring transition events

s3:ObjectTransition:Complete and s3:ObjectTransition:Failed events can be used to monitor transition events between the source cluster and transition tier. To watch lifecycle events, you can enable bucket notification on the source bucket with mc event add and specify --event ilm flag.

Note that transition event notification is a MinIO extension.