AWS S3 Lifecycle Management

(This page is a work in progress. The policies defined below are still be adjusted, and are not actively deployed)

AWS S3 Lifecycle Policy Overview

AWS S3 buckets can be configured with lifecycle policies. These policies allow for automatically changing the storage class of objects based on the last time they were accessed. AWS S3 objects are typically stored in the Standard storage class, which provides easy access, but has relatively high GB/month storage costs. Other storage classes, such as Infrequent Access and Glacier are more suitable for objects that are rarely accessed. These storage class maintain a much lower GB/month cost as compared to the Standard S3 storage class.

In order to reduce monthly S3 storage costs, the UCSC GI has implemented global S3 lifecycle policies that transition objects to cheaper storage classes if they have not been accessed recently. Specifically, AWS S3 objects are transitioned as follows:

• After 30 days of inactivity, objects are transitioned to the Infrequent Access storage class.
• After 180 days of inactivity, objects are transitioned to the Glacier storage class.