Transition Objects from MinIO to GCS

Install and Configure mc

This procedure uses mc for performing operations on the MinIO cluster. Install mc on a machine with network access to both source and destination clusters. See the mc Installation Quickstart for instructions on downloading and installing mc.

Use the mc alias set command to create an alias for the source MinIO cluster. Alias creation requires specifying an access key for a user on the source and destination clusters. The specified users must have permissions for configuring and applying transition operations.

Required MinIO Permissions

MinIO requires the following permissions scoped to the bucket or buckets for which you are creating lifecycle management rules.

• s3:PutLifecycleConfiguration

• s3:GetLifecycleConfiguration

MinIO also requires the following administrative permissions on the cluster in which you are creating remote tiers for object transition lifecycle management rules:

• admin:SetTier

• admin:ListTier

For example, the following policy provides permission for configuring object transition lifecycle management rules on any bucket in the cluster:.

{
   "Version": "2012-10-17",
   "Statement": [
      {
            "Action": [
               "admin:SetTier",
               "admin:ListTier"
            ],
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Sid": "EnableRemoteTierManagement"
      },
      {
            "Action": [
               "s3:PutLifecycleConfiguration",
               "s3:GetLifecycleConfiguration"
            ],
            "Resource": [
                        "arn:aws:s3:::*"
            ],
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Sid": "EnableLifecycleManagementRules"
      }
   ]
}

Required GCS Permissions

Object transition lifecycle management rules require additional permissions on the remote storage tier. Specifically, MinIO requires the GCS credentials provide read, write, list, and delete permissions for the remote bucket.

Refer to the GCS IAM permissions documentation for more complete guidance on configuring the required permissions.

Remote Bucket Must Exist

Create the remote GCS bucket prior to configuring lifecycle management tiers or rules using that bucket as the target.

If you set a default GCS storage class, MinIO uses that default if you do not specify a storage class when defining the remote tier. Ensure you document the settings of both your GCS bucket and MinIO tiering configuration to avoid any potential confusion, misconfiguration, or other unexpected outcomes.

Lifecycle Management Object Scanner

MinIO uses a scanner process to check objects against all configured lifecycle management rules. Slow scanning due to high IO workloads or limited system resources may delay application of lifecycle management rules. See Lifecycle Management Object Scanner for more information.

Exclusive Access to Remote Data

MinIO requires exclusive access to the transitioned data on the remote storage tier. Object metadata on the “hot” MinIO source is strongly linked to the object data on the “warm/cold” remote tier. MinIO cannot retrieve object data without access to the remote, nor can the remote be used to restore lost metadata on the source.

All access to the transitioned objects must occur through MinIO via S3 API operations only. Manually modifying a transitioned object - whether the metadata on the “hot” MinIO tier or the object data on the remote “warm/cold” tier - may result in loss of that object data.

MinIO ignores any objects in the remote bucket or bucket prefix not explicitly managed by the MinIO deployment. Automatic transition and transparent object retrieval depend on the following assumptions:

• No external mutation, migration, or deletion of objects on the remote storage.

• No lifecycle management rules (e.g. transition or expiration) on the remote storage bucket.

MinIO stores all transitioned objects in the remote storage bucket or resource under a unique per-deployment prefix value. This value is not intended to support identifying the source deployment from the backend. MinIO supports an additional optional human-readable prefix when configuring the remote target, which may facilitate operations related to diagnostics, maintenance, or disaster recovery.

MinIO recommends specifying this optional prefix for remote storage tiers which contain other data, including transitioned objects from other MinIO deployments. This tutorial includes the necessary syntax for setting this prefix.

Availability of Remote Data

MinIO tiering behavior depends on the remote storage returning objects immediately (milliseconds to seconds) upon request. MinIO therefore cannot support remote storage which requires rehydration, wait periods, or manual intervention.

MinIO creates metadata for each transitioned object that identifies its location on the remote storage. Applications cannot trivially identify and access a transitioned object independent of MinIO. Availability of the transitioned data therefore depends on the same core protections that erasure coding and distributed deployment topologies provide for all objects on the MinIO deployment. Using object transition does not provide any additional business continuity or disaster recovery benefits.

Workloads that require BC/DR protections should implement MinIO Server-Side replication. Replication ensures objects remains preserved on the remote replication site, such that you can resynchronize from the remote in the event of partial or total data loss. See Resynchronization (Disaster Recovery) for more complete documentation on using replication to recover after partial or total data loss.

1) Configure User Accounts and Policies for Lifecycle Management

This step creates users and policies on the MinIO deployment for supporting lifecycle management operations. You can skip this step if the deployment already has users with the necessary permissions.

The following example uses Alpha as a placeholder alias for the MinIO deployment. Replace this value with the appropriate alias for the MinIO deployment on which you are configuring lifecycle management rules. Replace the password LongRandomSecretKey with a long, random, and secure secret key as per your organizations best practices for password generation.

wget -O - https://min.io/docs/minio/linux/examples/LifecycleManagementAdmin.json | \
mc admin policy create Alpha LifecycleAdminPolicy /dev/stdin
mc admin user add Alpha alphaLifecycleAdmin LongRandomSecretKey
mc admin policy attach Alpha LifecycleAdminPolicy --user=alphaLifecycleAdmin

This example assumes that the specified aliases have the necessary permissions for creating policies and users on the deployment. See User Management and MinIO Policy Based Access Control for more complete documentation on MinIO users and policies respectively.

2) Configure the Remote Storage Tier

Use the mc ilm tier add command to add a new Google Cloud Storage service as the remote storage tier:

mc ilm tier add gcs TARGET TIER_NAME \
   --bucket BUCKET \
   --prefix PREFIX \
   --credentials-file CREDENTIALS \
   --storage-class STORAGE_CLASS

The example above uses the following arguments:

3) Create and Apply the Transition Rule

Use the mc ilm rule add command to create a new transition rule for the bucket. The following example configures transition after the specified number of calendar days:

mc ilm rule add ALIAS/BUCKET \
--transition-tier TIERNAME \
--transition-days DAYS \
--noncurrent-transition-days NONCURRENT_DAYS
--noncurrent-transition-tier TIERNAME

The example above specifies the following arguments:

4) Verify the Transition Rule

Use the mc ilm rule ls command to review the configured transition rules:

mc ilm rule ls ALIAS/PATH --transition

• Replace ALIAS with the alias of the MinIO deployment.

• Replace PATH with the name of the bucket for which to retrieve the configured lifecycle management rules.