Lifecycle & storage classes

cargoship lifecycle manages S3 lifecycle policies so objects transition to cheaper storage classes automatically over time. Rather than hand-writing JSON, you apply one of CargoShip's predefined policy templates tuned for common archival patterns, or import and export your own. The full flag list lives in the command reference.

cargoship lifecycle --bucket BUCKET --template TEMPLATE_ID

Predefined templates

List the built-in templates and what each one does:

cargoship lifecycle --list-templates

CargoShip ships four templates, each targeting a prefix under archives/:

Template	Transitions	Expiration	Est. monthly savings
archive-optimization	Standard-IA at 30d → Glacier at 90d → Deep Archive at 365d	none	~60%
intelligent-tiering	Intelligent-Tiering immediately (day 0)	none	~25%
compliance-retention	Standard-IA at 30d → Glacier at 90d → Deep Archive at 365d	deletes at 2,555d (7 years)	~65%
fast-access	Standard-IA at 90d → Glacier at 365d	none	~30%

• archive-optimization — aggressive cost reduction for long-term archival data you rarely read (prefix archives/).
• intelligent-tiering — hands-off; S3 moves objects between access tiers automatically based on usage (prefix archives/).
• compliance-retention — the archive-optimization ladder plus a hard 7-year expiration for regulatory retention (prefix archives/compliance/).
• fast-access — keeps data in warmer classes longer for datasets that still need quick retrieval (prefix archives/frequent/).

All four also abort incomplete multipart uploads (after 1–7 days depending on the template) to stop orphaned parts from accruing charges.

Applying a policy

cargoship lifecycle --bucket my-bucket --template archive-optimization

📋 Applying lifecycle policy: Archive Optimization
   Aggressive cost optimization for long-term archival data
✅ Lifecycle policy applied successfully!

Estimating savings first

Add --estimate-size (data size in GB) to see the projected monthly and annual savings before or when you apply a template:

cargoship lifecycle --bucket my-bucket --template intelligent-tiering \
  --estimate-size 100

💰 Savings Estimate (100.0 GB):
   Current monthly cost: $2.30
   Optimized monthly cost: $1.73
   Monthly savings: $0.57 (24.8%)
   Annual savings: $6.84

Exporting, importing & removing

Review or version-control the current policy, apply a policy from a file, or remove lifecycle management entirely:

# Export the bucket's current policy to a file
cargoship lifecycle --bucket my-bucket --export policy.json

# Apply a policy from a file (validated on import)
cargoship lifecycle --bucket my-bucket --import policy.json

# Remove the lifecycle policy
cargoship lifecycle --bucket my-bucket --remove

--region selects the region (default us-east-1), and --profile picks an AWS credentials profile.

--remove clears all lifecycle rules

--remove deletes the bucket's entire lifecycle configuration, so objects stop transitioning and any expiration rules stop firing. Export first if you might want the policy back.

Lifecycle vs. upload-time storage class

Lifecycle policies are the "set it and forget it" complement to choosing storage at upload time:

• upload --storage-class picks the class objects land in immediately.
• Tier-aware storage assigns classes per chunk by file age at upload time.
• lifecycle transitions objects between classes automatically as they age, regardless of how they were uploaded.

Common classes: STANDARD, INTELLIGENT_TIERING, STANDARD_IA, GLACIER / GLACIER_IR, DEEP_ARCHIVE.

Best practices

TIP

• Estimate before you apply with --estimate-size so the savings match the retrieval trade-off you're accepting.
• Match the template to access frequency — fast-access for hot data, archive-optimization for cold, compliance-retention when you must delete on a schedule.
• Export policies into version control so lifecycle rules are reviewable and reproducible.
• Remember retrieval cost — colder classes cut storage cost but make restores slower and pricier.

See also

• Tier-aware storage — assign classes per chunk by file age.
• Analyzing existing S3 spend.
• Concepts: storage class & tier.
• Reference: Cost, budget & alerts.