Skip to main content

Using information lifecycle management

Contributors netapp-lhalbert
PDFs

You use information lifecycle management (ILM) to control the placement, duration, and data protection for all objects in your StorageGRID system. ILM rules determine how StorageGRID stores objects over time. You configure one or more ILM rules and then add them to an ILM policy.

ILM rules define:

  • Which objects should be stored. A rule can apply to all objects, or you can specify filters to identify which objects a rule applies to. For example, a rule can apply only to objects associated with certain tenant accounts, specific S3 buckets or Swift containers, or specific metadata values.

  • The storage type and location. Objects can be stored on Storage Nodes, in Cloud Storage Pools, or on Archive Nodes.

  • The type of object copies made. Copies can be replicated or erasure coded.

  • For replicated copies, the number of copies made.

  • For erasure coded copies, the erasure-coding scheme used.

  • The changes over time to an object's storage location and type of copies.

  • How object data is protected as objects are ingested into the grid (synchronous placement or dual commit).

Note that object metadata is not managed by ILM rules. Instead, object metadata is stored in a Cassandra database in what is known as a metadata store. Three copies of object metadata are automatically maintained at each site to protect the data from loss. The copies are evenly distributed across all Storage Nodes.

Example ILM rule

This example ILM rule applies to the objects belonging to Tenant A. It makes two replicated copies of those objects and stores each copy at a different site. The two copies are retained “forever,” which means that StorageGRID will not automatically delete them. Instead, StorageGRID will retain these objects until they are deleted by a client delete request or by the expiration of a bucket lifecycle.

This rule uses the Balanced option for ingest behavior: the two-site placement instruction is applied as soon as Tenant A saves an object to StorageGRID, unless it is not possible to immediately make both required copies. For example, if Site 2 is unreachable when Tenant A saves an object, StorageGRID will make two interim copies on Storage Nodes at Site 1. As soon as Site 2 becomes available, StorageGRID will make the required copy at that site.

Example ILM Rule 2 Copies Tenant A

How an ILM policy evaluates objects

The active ILM policy for your StorageGRID system controls the placement, duration, and data protection of all objects.

When clients save objects to StorageGRID, the objects are evaluated against the ordered set of ILM rules in the active policy, as follows:

  1. If the filters for the first rule in the policy match an object, the object is ingested according to that rule's ingest behavior and stored according to that rule's placement instructions.

  2. If the filters for the first rule do not match the object, the object is evaluated against each subsequent rule in the policy until a match is made.

  3. If no rules match an object, the ingest behavior and placement instructions for the default rule in the policy are applied. The default rule is the last rule in a policy and cannot use any filters.

Example ILM policy

This example ILM policy uses three ILM rules.

Example Policy for Two Tenants

In this example, Rule 1 matches all objects belonging to Tenant A. These objects are stored as three replicated copies at three sites. Objects belonging to other tenants are not matched by Rule 1, so they are evaluated against Rule 2.

Rule 2 matches all objects from other tenants but only if they are larger than 1 MB. These larger objects are stored using 6+3 erasure coding at three sites. Rule 2 does not match objects 1 MB or smaller, so these objects are evaluated against Rule 3.

Rule 3 is the last and default rule in the policy, and it does not use filters. Rule 3 makes two replicated copies of all objects not matched by Rule 1 or Rule 2 (objects not belonging to Tenant A that are 1 MB or smaller).

ILM Policy and Rules

Related information

Manage objects with ILM