Object Lifecycle Management

Object Lifecycle Management

  • Object lifecycle management in Google Cloud Storage is a feature that allows you to automatically manage the lifecycle of your data in Google Cloud Storage. 
  • It enables you to set policies that automate tasks such as moving data to cold storage, deleting data that is no longer needed, or transitioning data to another storage class. 
  • This helps you to reduce storage costs, improve data durability, and ensure that you are only paying for the storage you actually need.
  • Object lifecycle management also helps you to automate data management processes, so you can focus on other tasks and projects.
  • For example, you load staging data into a GCS bucket, you can set a lifecycle rule to delete such objects after a specified time has elapsed.
  • In order to use Object Lifecycle Management, you define a lifecycle configuration, which must be set on a bucket. 
  • The configuration contains a set of rules which apply to current and future objects in the bucket. 
  • When an object meets the criteria of one of the rules, Cloud Storage automatically performs a specified action on the object. Here are some example use cases:
  • Downgrade the storage class of objects older than 365 days to Coldline storage.
  • Delete objects created before January 1, 2019.
  • Keep only the 3 most recent versions of each object in a bucket with versioning enabled.

What is Object Versioning?

  • Object versioning in Google Cloud Storage is a feature that allows you to keep multiple versions of an object in a bucket. When object versioning is enabled, each time you upload a new version of an object, the previous version is preserved and can still be retrieved.
  • This feature provides an easy way to revert to an older version of an object if necessary, and helps to ensure data integrity by providing a historical record of changes to an object. 
  • Object versioning also helps you to more effectively manage storage capacity, as you can specify policies to automatically delete older versions of objects.
  • Each lifecycle management configuration contains a set of rules. Each rule contains one action and one or more conditions.
  • Here are the lifecycle actions:
    • Delete
    • SetStorageClass
    • AbortIncompleteMultipartUpload
  • The Delete action deletes an object when the object meets all conditions specified in the lifecycle rule.
  • The SetStorageClass action changes the storage class of an object and updates the object’s modification time when the object meets all conditions specified in the lifecycle rule.
  • The AbortIncompleteMultipartUpload action aborts an incomplete multipart upload and deletes the associated parts when the multipart upload meets the conditions specified in the lifecycle rule.

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