Automatic Object Expiration

Each procedure on this page creates a new object lifecycle management rule that expires objects on a MinIO bucket. This procedure supports use cases like removing “old” objects after a certain time period or calendar date.

Requirements

Install and Configure `mc`

This procedure uses mc for performing operations on the MinIO cluster. Install mc on a machine with network access to both source and destination clusters. See the mc Installation Quickstart for instructions on downloading and installing mc.

Use the mc alias set command to create an alias for the source MinIO cluster and the destination S3-compatible service. Alias creation requires specifying an access key for a user on the source and destination clusters. The specified users must have permissions for configuring and applying expiry operations.

Required Permissions

MinIO requires the following permissions scoped to the bucket or buckets for which you are creating lifecycle management rules.

MinIO also requires the following administrative permissions on the cluster in which you are creating remote tiers for object transition lifecycle management rules:

For example, the following policy provides permission for configuring object transition lifecycle management rules on any bucket in the cluster:.

{
   "Version": "2012-10-17",
   "Statement": [
      {
            "Action": [
               "admin:SetTier",
               "admin:ListTier"
            ],
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Sid": "EnableRemoteTierManagement"
      },
      {
            "Action": [
               "s3:PutLifecycleConfiguration",
               "s3:GetLifecycleConfiguration"
            ],
            "Resource": [
                        "arn:aws:s3:::*"
            ],
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Sid": "EnableLifecycleManagementRules"
      }
   ]
}

Expire Objects after Number of Days

Use mc ilm rule add with --expire-days to expire bucket contents a number of days after object creation:

mc ilm rule add ALIAS/PATH --expire-days "DAYS"

Replace ALIAS with the alias of the S3-compatible host.
Replace PATH with the path to the bucket on the S3-compatible host.
Replace DAYS with the number of days after which to expire the object. For example, specify 30 to expire the object 30 days after creation.

Expire Versioned Objects

Use mc ilm rule add to expiring noncurrent object versions and object delete markers:

To expire noncurrent object versions after a specific duration in days, include --noncurrent-expire-days.
To expire delete markers for objects with no remaining versions, include --expire-delete-marker.

mc ilm rule add ALIAS/PATH \
   --noncurrent-expire-days NONCURRENT_DAYS \
   --expire-delete-marker

To expire all versions of an object, include --expire-all-object-versions. This expiration only applies to objects without a DeleteMarker as the latest or current version.
```
mc ilm rule add ALIAS/PATH \
   --expire-all-object-versions
```
Replace ALIAS with the alias of the S3-compatible host.
Replace PATH with the path to the bucket on the S3-compatible host.
Replace NONCURRENT_DAYS with the number of days after which to expire noncurrent object versions. For example, specify 30d to expire a version after it has been noncurrent for at least 30 days.

Expire All Versions of a Deleted Object

Starting with MinIO Server RELEASE.2024-05-01T01-11-10Z, MinIO supports deleting all versions of an object that has a delete marker as its latest version. MinIO supports such deletes with JSON, not through the command line.

To add this capability to a rule, first export the rule to modify with mc ilm rule export. Modify the exported rule with additional JSON that resembles the following:

<DelMarkerObjectExpiration>
    <Days> 10 </Days>
</DelMarkerObjectExpiration>

This example JSON expires all versions of the deleted object after 10 days. Modify the value in the <Days> element to the number of days you want to wait after deleting the object before expiring it and removing it from MinIO.