Documentation

Transition Objects from MinIO to Azure

The procedure on this page creates a new object lifecycle management rule that transition objects from a MinIO bucket to a remote storage tier on the Azure storage backend. This procedure supports use cases like moving aged data to low-cost public cloud storage solutions after a certain time period or calendar date.

Requirements

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.

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

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 Azure Permissions

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

Refer to the Azure RBAC documentation for more complete guidance on configuring the required permissions.

Remote Storage Account and Container Must Exist

Create the remote Azure storage account and container prior to configuring lifecycle management tiers or rules using that resource as the target. When creating the Azure storage account, ensure the storage account corresponds to either Standard or Premium blob storage with the locally redundant storage (LRS) redundancy option. The Azure Go SDK API used by MinIO does not support any other redundancy options.

If you set a Storage Account default access tier, 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 Azure storage account and MinIO tiering configuration to avoid any potential confusion, misconfiguration, or other unexpected outcomes.

For more information on Azure storage accounts, see Storage accounts.

Considerations

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.

Important

MinIO does not support changing the account name associated to an Azure remote tier. Azure storage backends are tied to the account, such that changing the account would change the storage backend and prevent access to any objects transitioned to the original account/backend.

Please contact MinIO Support if you need situation-specific guidance around configuring Azure remote tiers.

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.

Procedure

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 remote storage tier:

mc ilm tier add azure TARGET TIER_NAME \
   --account-name ACCOUNT \
   --account-key KEY \
   --bucket CONTAINER \
   --endpoint ENDPOINT \
   --prefix PREFIX \
   --storage-class STORAGE_CLASS

The example above uses the following arguments:

Argument

Description

TARGET

The alias of the MinIO deployment on which to configure the remote tier.

TIER_NAME

The name to associate with the new Azure blob remote storage tier. Specify the name in all-caps, e.g. AZURE_TIER. This value is required in the next step.

ACCOUNT

The Storage Account to use as the remote storage resource.

You cannot change this account name after creating the tier.

KEY

The corresponding shared account key for the specified ACCOUNT.

The account key must have an assigned Azure policy with the required permissions.

See Managing storage account access keys for more information.

CONTAINER

The name of the container on the Azure storage backend to which MinIO transitions objects.

ENDPOINT

(Optional) The full URL of the Azure blob storage backend to which MinIO transitions objects. Defaults to https://ACCOUNT.blob.core.windows.net if not specified.

PREFIX

The optional container prefix within which MinIO transitions objects.

MinIO stores all transitioned objects in the specified BUCKET under a unique per-deployment prefix value. Omit this argument to use only that value for isolating and organizing data within the remote storage.

MinIO recommends specifying this optional prefix for remote storage tiers which contain other data, including transitioned objects from other MinIO deployments. This prefix should provide a clear reference back to the source MinIO deployment to facilitate ease of operations related to diagnostics, maintenance, or disaster recovery.

STORAGE_CLASS

The Azure access tier MinIO applies to objects transitioned to the Azure container.

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.

The following Azure access tiers meet MinIO’s requirements as a remote tier:

  • Hot

  • Cool

For more information, see Hot, cool, and archive access tiers for blob data.

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:

Argument

Description

ALIAS

Specify the alias of the MinIO deployment for which you are creating the lifecycle management rule.

BUCKET

Specify the full path to the bucket for which you are creating the lifecycle management rule.

TIERNAME

The remote storage tier to which MinIO transitions objects. Specify the remote storage tier name created in the previous step.

If you want to transition noncurrent object versions to a distinct remote tier, specify a different tier name for --noncurrent-transition-tier.

DAYS

The number of calendar days after which MinIO marks an object as eligible for transition. Specify the number of days as an integer, e.g. 30 for 30 days.

NONCURRENT_DAYS

The number of calendar days after which MinIO marks a noncurrent object version as eligible for transition. MinIO specifically measures the time since an object became non-current instead of the object creation time. Specify the number of days as an integer, e.g. 90 for 90 days.

Omit this value to ignore noncurrent object versions.

This option has no effect on non-versioned buckets.

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.