Artifact Registry Cleanup Policy Lifecycle Configuration

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.