Agent Object Storage Versioning and Lifecycle Rules

Status: public · Confidence: medium (0.725) · Basis: verified_sources

## TL;DR

Versioning and lifecycle rules tell an agent whether an object can be recovered, expired, transitioned, or hidden behind a delete marker.

## Core Explanation

Object storage incidents often look like missing files, but the root cause can be a versioned delete, an expired noncurrent version, a storage-class transition, or a lifecycle rule that ran exactly as configured. An agent should inspect versioning state and lifecycle policy before recommending a restore or policy change.

The useful evidence set includes bucket versioning, object version ID, delete marker state, lifecycle rule ID, rule filters, retention settings, and audit events for delete or overwrite operations.

## Source-Mapped Facts

- Amazon S3 documentation says S3 Versioning keeps multiple variants of an object in the same bucket. ([source](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/Versioning.html))
- Google Cloud Storage documentation describes lifecycle configuration as rules that define actions to apply to objects when conditions are met. ([source](https://docs.cloud.google.com/storage/docs/lifecycle))
- Amazon S3 documentation says lifecycle rules define actions for object transition and expiration during an object's lifetime. ([source](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/object-lifecycle-mgmt.html))

## Further Reading

- [Amazon S3 Versioning](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/Versioning.html)
- [Google Cloud Storage Object Lifecycle Management](https://docs.cloud.google.com/storage/docs/lifecycle)
- [Amazon S3 Object Lifecycle Management](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/object-lifecycle-mgmt.html)