Manage Your OSS Storage Costs Using Lifecycle Policies

Shedrack Okpara

What Is OSS?

Alibaba Cloud Object Storage Service (OSS) is a secure, low-cost, and durable cloud storage service that allows you to upload and save massive volumes of data to the cloud. OSS is built to provide data durability of 99.9999999999% (twelve nines) and service availability of 99.995%. OSS is similar to AWS S3 (for those familiar with other public cloud platforms).

OSS Key Features

Retention Policy
Control Access to Data
Zone-Disaster Recovery
Delete multiple objects at a specified point in time automatically
Download Objects
Upload Objects

What Are OSS Lifecycle Policies?

Alibaba Cloud allows you to manage objects efficiently and minimize costs throughout the lifecycle of the objects in your instance. Lifecycle settings create a set of rules that help define the actions that an OSS bucket instance must perform on a group of objects. OSS allows you to configure lifecycle rules to delete expired objects and parts or convert the storage class of expired objects to IA or Archive. A lifecycle rule takes effect 48 hours after it is configured or modified.

How to Create an OSS Lifecycle Policy

Creating a New OSS Bucket

On the Alibaba Cloud console, search and select Object Storage Service (OSS):

On the new page, click Buckets and then Create Bucket:

On the Create Bucket page, fill in the required information and click OK. Some things to note:

Your bucket name must be globally unique
Storage Class, Region, and Zone-redundant Storage cannot be changed after the bucket is created.

Configuring a Lifecycle Rule

Click on the newly created bucket:

On the next page, select Basic Settings:

Select Configure and click Create Rule:

On the Lifecycle Rule page, you need to specify the following settings labeled in the screenshot:

Enable the rule
Choose whether the rule should apply to certain objects within your bucket of the entire bucket
Choose whether you want to use the validity period given in days or an expiration date, where you choose the date after which the object will move to another storage class
Transit to IA Storage Class: The storage class of objects is automatically converted from Standard to IA 60 days after the objects are last modified. The IA storage class is suitable for data that is infrequently accessed. You may be charged data retrieval fees when you access IA objects.
Transit to Archive Storage Class: The storage class of objects is automatically converted from Standard or IA to Archive 180 days after the objects are last modified. You must take a few minutes to restore Archive objects before you can access them. The Archive storage class is suitable for data that is infrequently accessed. You may be charged data retrieval fees when you access Archive objects.
Transit to Cold Archive Storage Class: The storage class of objects is automatically converted from Standard, IA, or Archive to Cold Archive 200 days after the objects are last modified. The Cold Archive storage class is suitable for data that is rarely accessed. You may be charged data retrieval fees when you access Cold Archive objects.

After making the necessary selections, click OK.

Conclusion

Lifecycle policies are very helpful when you need the means to manage your object stored in OSS for long periods. You create the rule once, and the rest is handled by OSS. Multiple lifecycles rules can be created for different buckets as needed.

Community

Manage Your OSS Storage Costs Using Lifecycle Policies

What Is OSS?

OSS Key Features

What Are OSS Lifecycle Policies?

How to Create an OSS Lifecycle Policy

Creating a New OSS Bucket

Configuring a Lifecycle Rule

Conclusion

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