Your team manages automated CI/CD artifact lifecycles across development and production environments using Google Cloud Artifact Registry. Frequent automated pipeline runs are rapidly inflating cloud storage costs with intermediate untagged layers and expired preview builds. You need to configure automated repository cleanup policies to enforce the following governance and retention criteria: Retain the 10 most recent artifact versions unconditionally, regardless of age or tag status. Protect all production-ready releases tagged with the prod- prefix from deletion indefinitely. Automatically remove untagged container image versions that are older than 14 days. Automatically remove feature branch builds tagged with the feat- prefix that are older than 30 days. Which cleanup policy configuration should you implement in Artifact Registry?

Define two KEEP policies (one with mostRecentVersions keepCount set to 10, and one with tagState TAGGED and tagPrefixes ["prod-"]) and two DELETE policies (one with tagState UNTAGGED and olderThan 14d, and one with tagState TAGGED, tagPrefixes ["feat-"], and olderThan 30d).: ### What Artifact Registry Cleanup Policies Are **Artifact Registry Cleanup Policies** provide automated, declarative lifecycle management directly on container and language repositories. They allow platform engineers to define granular rules using conditions such as **tag status**, **tag prefixes**, **version age**, and **version count limits** to automate storage optimization without requiring custom cron scripts or maintenance tools. ### How It Meets the Requirements - **Retaining 10 most recent versions**: Setting a `KEEP` policy with `mostRecentVersions.keepCount: 10` evaluates all versions in the repository and unconditionally preserves the newest 10 artifacts regardless of any other matching deletion rules. - **Protecting `prod-` tagged releases**: Defining a `KEEP` policy matching `tagState: TAGGED` with `tagPrefixes: ["prod-"]` ensures that any version bearing a production tag is never purged. - **Deleting untagged images older than 14 days**: Defining a `DELETE` policy targeting `tagState: UNTAGGED` with an `olderThan: 14d` duration safely strips away old orphaned intermediate layers. - **Purging stale feature builds older than 30 days**: Defining a `DELETE` policy targeting `tagState: TAGGED`, `tagPrefixes: ["feat-"]`, and `olderThan: 30d` cleans up abandoned branch testing builds. ### Key Advantages and Capabilities - **Evaluation Priority**: In Artifact Registry, `KEEP` policies always take precedence over `DELETE` policies, guaranteeing that artifacts matching retention rules will never be removed even if they match a deletion condition. - **Native Integration**: Policies execute continuously within Google Cloud infrastructure with zero compute overhead or external scheduler dependencies. - **Multi-Condition Filtering**: Policies support combining criteria including `tagState`, `tagPrefixes`, `versionNamePrefixes`, `olderThan`, and `newerThan`. - **Dry Run Support**: Administrators can simulate policy outcomes before enforcing permanent deletion of image manifests. ### Why This Is Optimal This design precisely separates **retention guardrails** (`KEEP` rules) from **storage cleanup logic** (`DELETE` rules). Because Artifact Registry evaluates all `KEEP` rules first, production images and recent rollbacks are guaranteed protection before any time-based deletion occurs.

Artifact Registry Cleanup Policy Lifecycle Configuration | Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer

Artifact Registry Cleanup Policy Lifecycle Configuration

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Your team manages automated CI/CD artifact lifecycles across development and production environments using Google Cloud Artifact Registry. Frequent automated pipeline runs are rapidly inflating cloud storage costs with intermediate untagged layers and expired preview builds.

You need to configure automated repository cleanup policies to enforce the following governance and retention criteria:

Retain the 10 most recent artifact versions unconditionally, regardless of age or tag status.
Protect all production-ready releases tagged with the prod- prefix from deletion indefinitely.
Automatically remove untagged container image versions that are older than 14 days.
Automatically remove feature branch builds tagged with the feat- prefix that are older than 30 days.

Which cleanup policy configuration should you implement in Artifact Registry?

Create a Cloud Scheduler job targeting Cloud Functions to query the Artifact Registry API every night and execute gcloud artifacts docker images delete for non-matching tags.

Define two KEEP policies (one with mostRecentVersions keepCount set to 10, and one with tagState TAGGED and tagPrefixes ["prod-"]) and two DELETE policies (one with tagState UNTAGGED and olderThan 14d, and one with tagState TAGGED, tagPrefixes ["feat-"], and olderThan 30d).

Define four DELETE policies with negative regex match patterns that explicitly exclude tagPrefixes prod-* and version indices 1 through 10.

Define a single DELETE policy with multiple condition blocks combining tagState ANY, keepCount 10, and olderThan 30d, while omitting any KEEP policies.

Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer

Artifact Registry Cleanup Policy Lifecycle Configuration

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