Cold Archive - Getting started with Cold Archive

Objective

Cold Archive provides long-term data storage by archiving bucket objects onto physical tapes. Restoration may take some time since data is read from tapes.

As explained in details in the Cold Archive FAQ, there are two ways of consuming Cold Archive:

• Cold Archive v1, a standalone bucket-granular Cold Archive solution (legacy offering).
• Cold Archive v2, an Object Storage class/tier that allows archiving individual objects within a container.

Although there are two underlying ways of consuming Cold Archive, we continue to refer to the solution as 'Cold Archive' in all customer-facing materials, including the product page and customer experience, without explicitly mentioning 'v1' or 'v2'.

This guide explains how to set up and manage storage on tapes with Cold Archive v1 (legacy offering), in coexistence with your Object Storage.

Requirements

• Getting started with Object Storage
• awscli version >= 1.16.62

Instructions

This section explains the step-by-step process to configure, archive, restore, and delete buckets with Cold Archive v1, in coexistence with your Object Storage.

In this tutorial, awscli aliases are used to simplify the commands.

Initial Setup: create AWS CLI Aliases

To simplify commands, create or edit the ~/.aws/cli/alias file:

mkdir -p ~/.aws/cli
touch ~/.aws/cli/alias

Add the following content:

[toplevel]

put-ovh-archive = s3api put-bucket-intelligent-tiering-configuration --id myid --intelligent-tiering-configuration '{"Id": "myid", "Status": "Enabled", "Tierings": [{"Days": 999,"AccessTier": "OVH_ARCHIVE"}]}' --bucket

put-ovh-restore = s3api put-bucket-intelligent-tiering-configuration --id myid --intelligent-tiering-configuration '{"Id": "myid", "Status": "Enabled", "Tierings": [{"Days": 999,"AccessTier": "OVH_RESTORE"}]}' --bucket

get-ovh-bucket-status = s3api get-bucket-intelligent-tiering-configuration --id myid --bucket

delete-ovh-archive = s3api delete-bucket-intelligent-tiering-configuration --id myid --bucket

Check for Incomplete Multipart Uploads Before Archiving

Run this command to ensure there are no incomplete multipart uploads on your bucket:

aws --endpoint-url https://s3.rbx-archive.io.cloud.ovh.net s3api list-multipart-uploads --bucket <bucket_name>

Upload your objects

To add objects to the bucket you wish to archive, use the following command:

aws --endpoint-url https://s3.rbx-archive.io.cloud.ovh.net s3api put-object --bucket <bucket-name> --key <object-name> --body <object-name>

Archive a bucket

aws --endpoint-url https://s3.rbx-archive.io.cloud.ovh.net put-ovh-archive <bucket_name>

• The bucket status changes to "Archiving".
• Objects cannot be read or written during this process; only listing is allowed.
• Archiving to tapes takes some time.

Archive a bucket with retention lock (WORM Compliance)

By default, an archive is not locked i.e you can still delete an archive after it has been written to tapes. To ensure your archive follows the WORM (Write Once Read Many) model, you can set a retention period in your intelligent tiering configuration using the OVH_ARCHIVE_LOCK access tier and a number of days. The archive will be then locked until the current date + the number of days specified.

{
    "Id": "myid",
    "Status": "Enabled",
    "Tierings": [
        {"Days": <retention_in_days>, "AccessTier": "OVH_ARCHIVE_LOCK"}
    ]
}

Lock an already archived bucket

If you have buckets that have been previously archived without using the OVH_ARCHIVE_LOCK access tier, you can still lock them by re-applying an intelligent tiering configuration to your bucket using the OVH_ARCHIVE_LOCK access tier and specifying a retention duration in days.

If you want to edit the retention period, similarly, re-apply the intelligent tiering configuration using the same "Id".

Restore a bucket

aws --endpoint-url https://s3.rbx-archive.io.cloud.ovh.net put-ovh-restore <bucket_name>

• Bucket status changes to "Restoring".
• Once the restoration is complete, ojects become accessible in read-only mode for 30 days. After this period, a new restoration operation must be launched to access the archived objects.
• Objects in the archived bucket can still be listed at any time.

Delete an archive

Delete an intelligent-tiering configuration and objects of a bucket

aws --endpoint-url https://s3.rbx-archive.io.cloud.ovh.net delete-ovh-archive <bucket_name>

After this request, the objects of the bucket are not deleted yet as the deletion is done asynchronously.
The operation will delete everything (on tapes and all objects if restored) and the bucket status will be in a "Deleting" status.

Once the deletion is completed:

• The bucket status will be "Flushed".
• In this state, the bucket still exists (but is empty and does not contain any objects) and data has been removed from the tapes.
• The bucket can be released and you can remove your bucket:

aws s3 rb s3://<bucket_name>

Check the bucket status and retention tags

aws --endpoint-url https://s3.rbx-archive.io.cloud.ovh.net >> s3api get-bucket-tagging --bucket <bucket_name>

aws --endpoint-url https://s3.rbx-archive.io.cloud.ovh.net s3api get-bucket-tagging --bucket <bucket_name>

{
    "TagSet": [
        {
            "Key": "ovh:intelligent_tiering_status",
            "Value": "Archived"
        },
        {
            "Key": "ovh:intelligent_tiering_archive_lock_until",
            "Value": "2124-01-19T15:24:56.000Z"
        }
    ]
} 

List of bucket statuses

Advanced Verification: Inspect Intelligent Tiering Configuration

To retrieve the full intelligent-tiering configuration JSON applied to your bucket:

aws s3api get-bucket-intelligent-tiering-configuration --bucket <bucket_name> --id myid

This command returns detailed configuration info which can be useful for debugging or verification.

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