Learn how to create an S3 bucket Lifecycle Policy and optimize your AWS expenses. We offer a step-by-step guide to creating a lifecycle policy in an S3 bucket. Let’s get deep and learn!
Amazon S3 Bucket, a powerful storage tool for cloud computing, is available. Different S3 storage classes let you store different types depending on your access requirements. AWS lifecycle policy actions can include deleting, archiving, and transitioning objects between classes. A lifecycle policy can be created for all S3 objects within a single bucket. These objects must use a shared tag, or prefix. You can have up to 1000 policies per S3 bucket.
AWS’s best cost optimization best practices include creating an Amazon S3 Lifecycle Policy. This policy manages the data stored in your S3 buckets. A lifecycle policy is a way to instruct Amazon AWS how to handle an object over its lifetime. You can also create lifecycle policies that will apply to both legacy and modern versions of objects. Lifecycle policies are crucial for cloud security, internal policy compliance and compliance with legislative requirements.
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How to create a lifecycle policy for an S3 bucket
Are you ready to lower your AWS costs with the Amazon S3 Lifecycle Policy AWS optimization strategy? If you are, let’s get started with the step-by-step guide to creating a lifecycle policy to an S3 bucket.
1. Log in to your AWS console. You can sign up for an AWS account if you don’t already have one. This allows you to access basic AWS Services for 12 months. You can use these services to test, configure, and deploy cloud projects.
Go to the AWS Homepage and click My Account. Next, select AWS Management Console from the pop-up menu.

2. Click on Services to be redirected directly to a tab that displays several AWS services, categorized by functionality.
Select S3.

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3. You will be taken to a page listing all your S3 buckets. Select the bucket you want to set lifecycle policies for. This will take you to an overview tab which shows the contents of the bucket.

Quick Tip: Versioning allows for you to create different lifecycle policies for different versions. To enable versioning, click the Properties tab on your dashboard and click the button in the Versioning column beside the word Disabled.

4. The Management tab contains all the information you need to create a lifecycle plan for your S3 bucket. After clicking on the Management tab click on ‘Add Lifecycle Rule’ from the list of options.

5. Clicking on the Add Lifecycle Rule button opens a dialog box which allows you to set your rule’s Name, Transition, Expiration and allows you review all of its settings.
Enter a relevant Rule name on the Name and Scope tab. This will help you identify the Lifecycle later using its name.

Quick Tip: AWS supports object tagging to allow storage segregation. If your S3 bucket doesn’t have any object tags, you can skip the ‘Add filter limit scope to prefix/tags’ portion. Click here to learn more about Prefix/Tags.
Once you have named your rule click Next.
6. Next, you can configure your bucket’s storage classes Transition options. This page allows you to instruct AWS how to transition objects between Standard S3 and Standard-IA, Glacier and Deep Storage Archives.

Quick Tip: Versioning has been enabled so you can choose different transitions between the previous and current versions of your bucket objects.
Click the radio button next to the current version of your object and then click Add Transition. If you wish to apply the transition to all objects, you can also do the same thing for older versions.
You have five options for each transition:
After completing the Transition to Standard IA, you can transition to Standard-IA.
After transition to Intelligent Tiering
After the transition to One Zone-IA,
Glacier After: Transition to Glacier
Transition to Glacier Deep Archive after
After a specified number of days, you can choose the S3 Storage class to which you want to transfer your data.
Once you’ve set all your transitions click Next.
Also read: 8 Ways to Lower Your AWS Bill

7. Next, you can set the expiration date for your S3 bucket objects.

We’ll be setting expiration for both the current version and previous versions of our data. Let’s check both the Current and Previous versions boxes.
Next to Expire Current Version, check the box. Then, choose the number of days it will remain in effect. You cannot delete objects that have expired after you select this expire option. In our case, the number of days was 295.