CODEWITHSUNDEEP
google-cloud-storage
Karsten Silz
Karsten Silz

Reputation: 1076

Without retention policy or lifecycle rules, would Google Cloud Storage automatically delete files?

My app uses Google Cloud Storage through Firebase with Java, Angular & Flutter. It stores pictures and such there. Now, a lot of older files recently disappeared from Google Cloud Storage. A test version of my app is probably the culprit. But I want to make sure that I got the storage bucket configured correctly.

Please note that I don't have object versioning enabled. From what I know, it would keep a copy of deleted files around. That's why I plan to enable it in the future. But it doesn't help me with files deleted in the past.

Right now, my storage bucket is configured as follows:

So with that configuration, would Google Cloud Storage automatically delete files? Like, say, after a year or so?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1219

Answers (1)

Brandon Yarbrough
Brandon Yarbrough

Reputation: 38389

No. If you don't ask Cloud Storage to delete your files, your files will stay around forever. There's no expiration of any sort by default. Cloud Storage is a popular tool for long term storage/backup/retention.

If you want to be especially careful not to delete certain objects, retention policies and object holds can be used to make it harder to delete objects by accident. For example, if you wanted to temporarily ensure that your scripts would not delete your most important object, you could run:

gsutil retention temp set gs://my_bucket_name/my_important_file.txt

This would set a "temporary object hold" on the object, which would make it so that my_important_file.txt could not be deleted with the delete command until you released the hold.

Upvotes: 1

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