Cloud Storage Lifecycle: Hot to Archive

A lifecycle rule pairs conditions with actions to enforce retention and cost goals without manual moves. The age condition selects objects that have reached a certain age, while the matches-storage-class condition selects only objects currently in a specific class. For example, a rule can move 90-day-old Standard objects to Nearline and later move older Nearline objects to Archive. A deletion action removes objects after their required retention period ends, which stops storage charges for data that no longer needs to be kept. Because colder classes have minimum storage durations, transitions and deletions should align with how long data must be retained to avoid early-deletion charges.