Lifecycle Policies

Lifecycle policies are background tasks that automatically clean up old records from your buckets. They help you manage storage efficiently by removing outdated data based on rules you define.

How It Works

A lifecycle policy runs at a configurable interval and scans the target bucket for records older than max_age. It removes these records and logs the operation in the $audit system bucket. You can optionally scope policies to specific entries or filter records using conditions.

Policies are stored on disk and remain active after restarts. However, read-only (replica) instances cannot execute lifecycle policies. Every policy run is recorded as a lifecycle_run event in the $audit bucket for transparency and debugging.

Supported Actions

Currently, ReductStore supports one action type for lifecycle policies:

Type	Description
delete	Removes records older than max_age from the bucket

More action types may be added in future releases.

Policy Settings

You can configure lifecycle policies using the following settings:

Setting	Description	Required	Default
type	Action type (e.g., delete)	No	delete
bucket	Target bucket name	Yes	-
entries	List of entries to scope the policy (wildcard * supported)	No	-
max_age	Maximum age of records before action is applied (e.g., 30d, 1h, 5m)	Yes	-
interval	Policy execution interval (e.g., 3600s, 10m)	No	3600s
when	JSON condition to filter records (see Conditional Query Reference)	No	-
mode	Policy mode: enabled (default) or disabled	No	enabled

Conditional Policies

You can refine lifecycle policies using the entries and when parameters:

• entries: Limit the policy to specific entries (e.g., sensor-1,sensor-2 or sensor-*)
• when: Apply the policy only to records matching a condition (e.g., {"&sensor_type": {"$eq": "temperature"}})

For more details, see the Conditional Query Reference.

Example

Imagine you store telemetry data from temperature sensors in a bucket called telemetry. You want to automatically delete records older than 30 days, but only for specific sensors (sensor-1 and sensor-2) and only if the sensor_type label equals temperature. Here’s how you’d configure the policy:

version: "3"
services:
  reductstore:
    image: reduct/store:latest
    ports:
      - "8383:8383"
    volumes:
      - ./data:/data
    environment:
      RS_API_TOKEN: my-api-token
      RS_BUCKET_1_NAME: telemetry
      RS_LIFECYCLE_1_NAME: purge-sensors-30d
      RS_LIFECYCLE_1_BUCKET: telemetry
      RS_LIFECYCLE_1_TYPE: delete
      RS_LIFECYCLE_1_MAX_AGE: 30d
      RS_LIFECYCLE_1_INTERVAL: 10m
      RS_LIFECYCLE_1_ENTRIES: "sensor-1,sensor-2"

      RS_LIFECYCLE_1_WHEN: |
        {
          "&sensor_type": { "$eq": "temperature" }
        }

Managing Policies

Currently, lifecycle policies can only be provisioned using environment variables. They cannot be updated or removed via the API.

info

Provisioned policies cannot be modified or deleted through the API. To make changes, update the environment variables and restart the ReductStore instance.

Audit Logs

Every lifecycle run generates a lifecycle_run event in the $audit bucket. The event includes:

• Policy name and action type
• Target bucket and duration of the run
• Number of records processed
• Error details (if any)