Intelligent Tiering offers automatic access tiers and asynchronous archive access tiers. The main difference between these tiers is that the latter requires time to restore objects.
Warning
To run Artifactory with Intelligent Tiering, only automatic access tiers can be used. The asynchronous archive access tiers should not be used under any circumstances.
The automatic access tiers are:
Frequent Access Tier
Infrequent Access Tier
Archive Instant Access Tier
If you have no special need to create a custom configuration, Intelligent Tiering works fine on Artifactory with the default settings. If you need to create a custom configuration, you must read the section Warning about Custom Configurations to ensure that you do not mistakenly use the archive access tiers, as these tiers can be activated during a customer configuration.
Changes in Artifactory
Currently, there are no changes you need to make to Artifactory to work with Intelligent Tiering.
Changes in S3
The steps for implementing Intelligent Tiering as the storage class for the S3 objects in Artifactory are as follows:
Establish the criteria for which objects you want to migrate to the Intelligent Tiering storage class. Click here for more details.
Set up a lifecycle rule to transition all existing objects to Intelligent Tiering. The same lifecycle rule should also set the storage class of newly created objects to Intelligent Tiering. Make sure to also include the previous versions, in case versioning is enabled. Click here for more details.
Optional: After no less than one month, run an S3 Inventory job and report how many objects have been transitioned to the infrequent access tier. It’s worth considering that the cost of S3 for the first month will be higher than when using standard storage. This is because all objects will sit in the frequent access tier that doesn’t offer a reduction in costs, and on top of that you will be paying for the S3 Intelligent Tiering service. Click here for more details.
Optional: After no less than 2 more months (3 months after enabling Intelligent Tiering), run another S3 Inventory job. This time you should observe objects that have been transitioned to the archive tier. Click here for more details.
Note
Steps 3 and 4 are optional since they are only recommended for tracking cost-effectiveness.
Put in place an AWS batch job needed for performing a rollback. Click here for more details.
The diagram below shows the timeline of transitioning objects for the first three months of using Intelligent Tiering storage.