Explaining Current and Noncurrent Versions of AWS S3 Lifecycle Policies

The aim of this page📝 is to explain Amazon S3 Lifecycle policies containing the concepts of current and noncurrent versions.

• Amazon S3 Lifecycle policies are a set of rules that define actions applied to objects during their lifetime.
• These actions can be transition actions, which move the current version of the object between various storage classes, or expiration actions, which define when an object expires.
• In a versioned bucket, every object has a current version and zero or more noncurrent versions.
• Lifecycle policies can affect both current and noncurrent versions of objects.

Here is an example of an S3 Lifecycle configuration:

{
  "Rules": [
    {
      "Status": "Disabled", 
      "NoncurrentVersionExpiration": {
        "NoncurrentDays": 90
      }, 
      "ID": "foo1"
    }, 
    {
      "Status": "Enabled", 
      "NoncurrentVersionExpiration": {
        "NoncurrentDays": 90
      }, 
      "Transition": {
        "Days": 30, 
        "StorageClass": "STANDARD_IA"
      }, 
      "Expiration": {
        "Days": 90
      }, 
      "AbortIncompleteMultipartUpload": {
        "DaysAfterInitiation": 90
      }, 
      "NoncurrentVersionTransition": {
        "NoncurrentDays": 30, 
        "StorageClass": "STANDARD_IA"
      }, 
      "ID": "foo2"
    }
  ]
}