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Step 3: Revise ILM Policies

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From Step 3 (Revise ILM Policies) of the Decommission Site wizard, you can determine if the site is referred to by any ILM policy.

Before you begin

You have a good understanding of how to manage objects with ILM. You are familiar with creating storage pools and ILM rules and with simulating and activating an ILM policy.

About this task

StorageGRID can't decommission a site if any ILM rule in any policy (active or inactive) references that site.

If any ILM policy refers to the site you want to decommission, you must remove those policies or edit them so that they meet these requirements:

  • Fully protect all object data.

  • Don't refer to the site you're decommissioning.

  • Don't use storage pools that refer to the site or use the All Sites option.

  • Don't use erasure-coding profiles that refer to the site.

  • Don't use the Make 2 Copies rule from StorageGRID 11.6 or earlier installations.

Caution Never create a single-copy ILM rule to accommodate the removal of a site. An ILM rule that creates only one replicated copy for any time period puts data at risk of permanent loss. If only one replicated copy of an object exists, that object is lost if a Storage Node fails or has a significant error. You also temporarily lose access to the object during maintenance procedures such as upgrades.
Tip If you're performing a connected site decommission, you must consider how StorageGRID should manage the object data currently at the site you want to remove. Depending on your data protection requirements, new rules can move existing object data to different sites or they can delete any extra object copies that are no longer needed.

Contact technical support if you need assistance designing a new policy.

Steps

  1. From Step 3 (Revise ILM Policies), determine if any ILM policies refer to the site you selected to decommission.

  2. If no policies are listed, select Next to go to Step 4: Remove ILM References.

  3. If one or more active ILM policies are listed, clone each existing policy or create new policies that don't reference the site being decommissioned:

    1. Select the link for the policy in the Policy Name column.

      The ILM policy details page for the policy appears in a new browser tab. The Decommission Site page will remain open on the other tab.

    2. Follow these guidelines and instructions as needed:

      • Work with ILM rules:

      • Work with ILM policies:

        • Clone an existing ILM policy or create a new ILM policy.

        • Ensure the default rule and other rules don't refer to the site.

          Caution You must confirm that the ILM rules are in the correct order. When the policy is activated, new and existing objects are evaluated by the rules in the order listed, starting at the top.

    3. Ingest test objects and simulate the policy to ensure that the correct rules are applied.

      Caution Errors in an ILM policy can cause unrecoverable data loss. Carefully review and simulate the policy before activating it to confirm that it will work as intended.
      Caution When you activate a new ILM policy, StorageGRID uses it to manage all objects, including existing objects and newly ingested objects. Before activating a new ILM policy, review any changes to the placement of existing replicated and erasure-coded objects. Changing an existing object's location might result in temporary resource issues when the new placements are evaluated and implemented.

    4. Activate the new policies and ensure the old policies are now inactive.

      If you want to activate multiple policies, follow the steps to create ILM policy tags.

      If you are performing a connected site decommission, StorageGRID begins to remove object data from the selected site as soon as you activate the new ILM policy. Moving or deleting all object copies might take weeks. Although you can safely start a site decommission while object data still exists at the site, the decommission procedure will complete more quickly and with fewer disruptions and performance impacts if you allow data to be moved from the site before starting the actual decommission procedure (by selecting Start Decommission in Step 5 of the wizard).

  4. For each inactive policy, edit or remove it by first selecting the link for each policy as described in the previous steps.

  5. When you finish making changes to ILM rules and policies, there should be no more policies listed in Step 3 (Revise ILM Policies). Select Next.

    Step 4 (Remove ILM References) appears.