Lifecycle policies help reduce storage costs by automatically tiering files or directories in a General-purpose NAS file system to a specific storage class based on their last access time.
Prerequisites
Before creating a lifecycle policy, review the limits and considerations for Lifecycle Management. For more information, see Lifecycle management.
Billing
Infrequent Access (IA) Storage class billing
IA storage capacity fees: These fees depend on the amount of data tiered to Infrequent Access (IA) storage and its storage duration.
IA storage read/write fees: Fees for accessing data in IA storage are based on the total hourly read and write traffic. The fees apply to both internal and public network traffic.
Archive Storage class billing
Archive storage capacity fees: These fees depend on the amount of data tiered to Archive Storage and its storage duration.
Minimum storage duration fee: Data in Archive Storage has a minimum storage duration of 60 days (1,440 hours). If you delete this data or reduce its size before the minimum period expires, you will be charged for the remaining time (1,440 hours - actual storage duration) based on the original size of the data.
Archive storage read/write fees: Fees for accessing data in Archive Storage are based on the total hourly read and write traffic. The fees apply to both internal and public network traffic.
Create a lifecycle policy
Log on to the NAS console.
In the left-side navigation pane, choose Lifecycle Management > Lifecycle Policies.
In the top navigation bar, select the resource group and region where your file system resides.
On the Lifecycle Policies page, click Create Lifecycle Policy.
In the Create Lifecycle Policy dialog box, configure the following parameters.
Parameter
Description
Policy Name
The name must be 3 to 64 characters in length, must start with a letter, and can contain letters, digits, underscores (_), and hyphens (-).
File System ID
Select the file system for the lifecycle policy. Use Fuzzy Search or Exact Search.
Apply To
Specify the directory paths or the entire file system to which the policy applies. A maximum of 10 directory paths can be specified.
/ the entire file system: Applies the policy to the entire file system.
Select Directory Paths: Click Select Directory Paths, choose the file or directory paths, and then click the
icon.Enter Directory Paths: The path must start with a forward slash (/). It can contain letters, digits, spaces, and the following special characters:
./+-=*@%().
NoteLifecycle policies tier only cold data files and do not change the directory structure of the file system. For example, if the /test directory contains a file named a1, you can still access the file from the /test path after the policy tiers the file. You can continue to write new data to the directory, and this new data will also be subject to the lifecycle policy.
Management Rule
Configure rules based on the last access time to specify the target storage class for files or directories. Options include:
Transition to IA storage: Suitable for data that is accessed infrequently, such as once or twice a month on average. Valid values (days since last access): 14, 30, 60, 90.
Transition to Archive storage: Ideal for long-term data retention, such as for compliance or data audits. Valid values (days since last access): 14, 30, 60, 90, 180.
Transition to IA storage, then to Archive storage: After you set the time to transition data to IA storage, click Add Rule, and then set the time to transition data to Archive storage. The transition period for Archive storage must be longer than the period for IA storage.
If a file remains unaccessed for the specified number of days, the system automatically tiers it to IA storage or Archive storage.
ImportantCurrently, Archive Storage is available only in the following regions: China (Chengdu), China (Hangzhou), China (Shanghai), China (Qingdao), China (Beijing), China (Zhangjiakou), China (Hohhot), China (Shenzhen), China (Guangzhou), China (Hong Kong), Philippines (Manila), Thailand (Bangkok), Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur), South Korea (Seoul), US (Silicon Valley), SAU (Riyadh - Partner Region), Indonesia (Jakarta), Japan (Tokyo), UK (London), Singapore, US (Virginia), and Germany (Frankfurt).
Lifecycle policies only tier cold data files between 64 KiB and 4.88 TiB. Files outside this size range are ignored.
Click OK.
The data migration task begins two hours after you create the policy.
View lifecycle policies
Log on to the NAS console.
In the left-side navigation pane, choose Lifecycle Management > Lifecycle Policies .
In the top navigation bar, select the resource group and region where your file system resides.
On the Lifecycle Policies page, view all lifecycle policies in the selected region.
Related operations
Operation | Description |
Modify a lifecycle policy | On the Lifecycle Policies page, find the target lifecycle policy and click Modify. Only the Management Rule of a policy can be modified. Other policy parameters are not editable. After you apply the changes, the system tiers data based on the new rule during the next scan cycle. |
Delete a lifecycle policy | On the Lifecycle Policies page, find the target lifecycle policy and click Delete. Follow the on-screen instructions to delete the policy. Important Deleting a policy does not remove data already stored in IA storage or Archive Storage. To avoid ongoing charges for this data, retrieve it before deleting the policy. For more information, see Create a data retrieval task. |