To easily manage your Object Storage, you may need to define the lifespan of some of your files. This allows you, for example, to keep some backups only for a specific period.
This guide shows you how to set up automatic file deletion after a specified period or on a specific date.
Prerequisites
- Prepare the environment to use the OpenStack API
- Set OpenStack environment variables
There are two ways to delete your objects/files
- After a certain number of seconds
- On a specific date
After a certain number of seconds
To do this, configure your request's X-Delete-After header
root@server:~$ swift post --header "X-Delete-After: 3600" container test.txt
The test.txt file will be deleted in an hour.
On a specific date
First, you need to know what the deletion date is in epoch format. To help you find the value you need to insert, use a converter.
Then you can enter this date in the X-Delete-At header:
root@server:~$ swift post --header "X-Delete-At: 1448928000000" container test.txt
The file will therefore be deleted on the 1st of December 2015.