Day 17: AWS - S3


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.
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
My First Lifecycle Rule (from the AWS Console)
Here’s what I did:
Went to my S3 bucket (
my-archive-demo
)Clicked Management → Lifecycle rules → Create rule
Named it:
auto-glacier-30days
Set filter: apply to all objects
Rule action:
Transition to Glacier Instant Retrieval after 30 days
Delete after 180 days (just to test it)
Saved it — and that was it.
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.
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
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.
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.
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