Lifecycle rules enable you to automate and manage expiration of files or objects in the Element Store. They are implemented through the S3 API and can be configured and listed using S3 API requests. However, they do not apply only to S3 objects. They can be used to manage the expiration of any data created and accessed as files via any supported client protocol as well as any data that was created as S3 objects.
A lifecycle rule defines expiration actions that are applied to a scope of objects within a bucket. They can expire objects a number of days after they are created, abort and remove incomplete multipart uploads, and cleanup expired object delete markers that can accumulate in versioned buckets. Each rule is defined for a specified scope of objects within a specified view. The scope can be defined by object prefix and/or object size.
Starting from VAST Cluster 5.3.4, you can also define the scope by object tags. In order for a rule to match an object and cause it to expire, all tags in the rule must match tags on the object. Both the key and the value of each tag must match. Tags must have keys. Tag values can be empty. If the tag in the rule has an empty value, the rule will only match an object and cause it to expire if the object tag with matching key also has an empty value.
Also from VAST Cluster 5.3.4, deletion of data by lifecycle rules is audited with RPC type DELETE_BY_LIFECYCLE_RULE. Prior to VAST Cluster 5.3.4, an element (file or object) deleted by a lifecycle rule is audited with RPC type DELETE_OBJECT.
Note
Both file and object deletions can be audited. Nevertheless, data deleted by lifecycle rules is audited under the S3 protocol in the audit log, regardless of which protocol was used to delete the data.