Lifecycle Rules – Teaching My S3 Bucket to Clean Up After Itself

Let’s be honest — my S3 buckets were starting to feel like my Downloads folder.
Messy. Untouched. Full of old junk I swore I’d "clean up later".

So I explored S3 Lifecycle Rules — and wow, it’s like setting up automated house cleaning for your storage.

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What Are Lifecycle Rules?

They’re basically:

“If this file gets old, do something about it.”

AWS lets you automate:

• Transitioning files to cheaper storage (like Glacier)

• Deleting files after a set time

• Expiring versions in versioned buckets

I liked the idea of:

• Moving old logs to Glacier after 30 days

• Deleting old temp files after 60 days

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My First Lifecycle Rule (from the AWS Console)

Here’s what I did:

1. Went to my S3 bucket (my-archive-demo)

2. Clicked Management → Lifecycle rules → Create rule

3. Named it: auto-glacier-30days

4. Set filter: apply to all objects

5. Rule action:

   • Transition to Glacier Instant Retrieval after 30 days

   • Delete after 180 days (just to test it)

Saved it — and that was it.

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Tried With Versioning Too

I enabled versioning on a test bucket.
Then added a second rule to:

• Expire non-current versions after 7 days

S3 doesn’t delete current files — just the older versions you no longer need.

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Why This Matters

• Cheaper storage → S3 Glacier is way cheaper than Standard

• Cleaner buckets → no more forgotten test files from 10 days ago

• Set-it-and-forget-it → AWS does the cleanup without needing Lambda or scripts

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Bonus: Lifecycle Rule via CLI

Just for the thrill, I checked the JSON of my rule. Here’s a simple version:

{
  "Rules": [
    {
      "ID": "log-archiving",
      "Prefix": "",
      "Status": "Enabled",
      "Transitions": [
        {
          "Days": 30,
          "StorageClass": "GLACIER_IR"
        }
      ],
      "Expiration": {
        "Days": 180
      }
    }
  ]
}

You can apply this with put-bucket-lifecycle-configuration via AWS CLI or SDK.

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Today I Learned

• Lifecycle rules are low effort, high value.

• You can apply them to all objects, or use filters like prefixes/tags.

• They're ideal for logs, temp uploads, backups, and versioned data.

• No Lambda. No cron. Just... set the rule and forget it.