Lifecycle Management

RustFS lifecycle management applies expiration and transition rules to objects in a bucket. This page shows how to manage those rules with rc, verify a transition, and restore a temporary local copy of transitioned data.

Before you begin, install rc, configure an alias named local, and create my-bucket. To transition objects, first register the target in Tiered Storage and note its uppercase tier name.

Add an expiration rule

Expire objects under the logs/ prefix 30 days after creation:

rc bucket lifecycle rule add local/my-bucket \
	--prefix logs/ \
	--expiry-days 30

The command creates an enabled rule and returns its generated rule ID. Record that ID when you need to edit or remove this specific rule.

Add a transition rule

Move object data to the registered COLDTIER tier after 90 days:

rc bucket lifecycle rule add local/my-bucket \
	--transition-days 90 \
	--storage-class COLDTIER

--storage-class must match a registered tier name. Adding the rule does not create the tier or validate an AWS storage-class label as a RustFS tier.

You can combine expiration and transition options in one rule. Use the noncurrent-version options only for a versioned bucket:

rc bucket lifecycle rule add local/my-bucket \
	--noncurrent-transition-days 30 \
	--noncurrent-transition-storage-class COLDTIER \
	--noncurrent-expiry-days 365

Inspect and update rules

List the current rules and note the ID of the rule you want to change:

rc bucket lifecycle rule list local/my-bucket

Change a rule's expiration period or disable it without deleting it:

rc bucket lifecycle rule edit local/my-bucket \
	--id <rule-id> \
	--expiry-days 60
rc bucket lifecycle rule edit local/my-bucket \
	--id <rule-id> \
	--disable true

Remove one rule by ID. Use --all only when you intend to remove the bucket's complete lifecycle configuration:

rc bucket lifecycle rule remove local/my-bucket --id <rule-id>
rc bucket lifecycle rule remove local/my-bucket --all

Export and import rules

Export the bucket's lifecycle configuration before a bulk change:

rc bucket lifecycle rule export local/my-bucket > lifecycle.json

Importing a file replaces the lifecycle configuration sent to the bucket. Review the JSON before applying it:

rc bucket lifecycle rule import local/my-bucket lifecycle.json

Confirm a lifecycle transition

After an object becomes eligible under its lifecycle rule, inspect it on the source cluster:

aws s3api head-object \
	--bucket my-bucket \
	--key hello.txt \
	--endpoint-url http://localhost:9000

After the transition completes, the response reports the registered tier name as the storage class:

{
	"StorageClass": "COLDTIER"
}

The response can contain additional object metadata. Before the transition completes, StorageClass may be absent or may not yet report COLDTIER.

Read the object through the source RustFS endpoint as usual:

aws s3 cp \
	s3://my-bucket/hello.txt \
	/path/to/hello.txt \
	--endpoint-url http://localhost:9000

RustFS reads transitioned data through the source bucket and object key. Applications do not need to address the target bucket directly.

Restore a local copy

Request a temporary local copy of a transitioned object and retain it for seven days:

rc bucket lifecycle restore local/my-bucket/hello.txt --days 7

While the copy-back is running, HEAD reports x-amz-restore: ongoing-request="true". After completion, it reports ongoing-request="false" with an expiry date. A second restore submitted while one is running returns RestoreAlreadyInProgress.

When the restore period expires, RustFS removes the local restored copy and its restore metadata. The transitioned object remains available from the remote tier.

Command compatibility

The latest rc also accepts rc ilm as a compatibility alias. We recommend the noun-first rc bucket lifecycle form for new commands and scripts:

rc bucket lifecycle --help
rc bucket lifecycle rule --help
rc bucket lifecycle tier --help

Next steps

Review Tiered Storage to monitor or maintain remote tiers, and use object creation to create test objects for a lifecycle rule.