Overview of Archive Storage

Buckets are logical containers for storing objects. A bucket is associated with a single compartment  that has policies  that determine what actions a user can perform on a bucket and on all the objects in the bucket.

When you initially create the bucket container for your data, you decide which default storage tier (Archive or Standard) is appropriate for your data. The default tier is automatically selected when you upload objects to the bucket, but you can instead select a different tier. Also, if objects meet the criteria of an object lifecycle policy rule, Object Storage can automatically move objects to Archive, while remaining in the Standard tier bucket.

Once set, you cannot change the default storage tier property for a bucket:

• An existing Standard tier bucket cannot be changed to an Archive tier bucket.
• An existing Archive tier bucket cannot be changed to a Standard tier bucket.

In addition to the inability to change the default storage tier designation of a bucket, there are other reasons why storage tier selection for buckets requires careful consideration:

• The minimum storage retention period for the Archive tier is 90 days. If you delete or overwrite objects from the Archive tier before the minimum retention requirements are met, you are charged the prorated cost of storing the data for the full 90 days.
• When you restore objects, you are returning those objects to the Standard tier for access. You are billed for the Standard class tier while the restored objects reside in that tier.

You can use object lifecycle policy rules to automatically delete objects in an Archive Storage bucket based on the age of the object. You cannot, however, use object lifecycle policy rules to automatically restore archived objects to the Standard tier. See Restoring and Downloading Objects for information on restoring objects.

See Managing Buckets for detailed instructions on creating an Archive Storage bucket.

Any type of data, regardless of content type, is stored as an object. The object is composed of the object itself and metadata about the object. Each object is stored in a bucket.

You upload objects to an Archive Storage bucket the same way you upload objects to a standard Object Storage bucket. The difference is that when you upload an object to an Archive Storage bucket, the object is immediately archived. You must first restore the object before you can download it.

Archived objects are displayed in the object listing of a bucket. You can also display the details of each object.

See Managing Objects for detailed instructions on uploading objects to an Archive Storage bucket.

To download an object from Archive Storage, you must first restore the object. Restoration takes at most an hour from the time an Archive Storage restore request is made, to the time the first byte of data is retrieved. The retrieval time metric is measured as Time To First Byte (TTFB). How long the full restoration takes, depends on the size of the object. You can determine the status of the restoration by looking at the object Details. Once the status shows as Restored, you can then download the object.

After an object is restored, you have a window of time to download the object. By default, you have 24 hours to download an object, but you can alternatively specify a time from 1 to 240 hours. You can find out how much of the download time is remaining by looking at Available for Download in object Details. After the allotted download time expires, the object returns to Archive Storage. You can always access the metadata for an object, regardless of whether the object is in an archived or restored state.

See Managing Objects for detailed instructions on restoring, checking status of, and downloading Archive Storage objects.