Amazon Simple Storage Service: Object Lifecycle Management

This is an important aspect of solution design to keep cost optimized by well-defined lifecycle. Lifecycle configuration enables to specify the lifecycle management of bucket in the bucket. This configuration is a set of rules, defines an action for AWS S3 to apply to a group of objects. These actions are classified as Transition actions and Expiration action.

• Transition actions are to transit to object from one storage class to another storage class based on rules configured by user or AWS S3
• Expiration Actions are to remove/delete/expire object from storage class based on rules configured by user or AWS S3

There are following AWS limitation or restriction of Object Lifecycle configuration

• Transition from STANDARD or REDUCED_REDUNDANCY storage classes to STANDARD_IA, following constraint, will be applying 
• An object must meet the minimum size condition to apply transition actions. AWS S3 does not transition the object which is less than 128KB
• An object must be in standard storage class for minimum 30 days. AWS S3 does not transition object which age is less than 30 days in standard storage
• for versioning enabled bucket, transitioning of noncurrent object to Standard-IA storage class can be done if objects are at least 30 days noncurrent
• An object cannot be transitioned to Glacier from Standard storage. Object must have to follow the path  Standard Storage --> Standard-IA storage --> Glacier
• An object must be in Standard-IA for at least 30 days before transitioning to Glacier for archival, and an expiration.
• Transition from STANDARD_IA storage class to the STANDARD and or REDUCED_REDUNDANCY classes are not supported
• Transition from GLACIER to any other storage class is not supported

Lifecycle configurations can be added to non-versioned buckets and versioning-enabled buckets if MFA is not enabled. Lifecycle configurations on MFA-enabled buckets are not supported.