After the archive policy is defined and created:
It executes on the scheduled date and time.
The archiving policy can also be executed manually using the Trigger button.
Note
Do not run more than 10 policies at the same time as this causes performance issues.
The system archives the artifacts or packages, along with the associated metadata, and moves it to the Cold Artifactory.
When an item is archived, the system dynamically creates dedicated archiving repositories on the Cold instance (the new repositories are created with a randomly generated namespace prefix).
As the archival process progresses, the system updates the logs in the Artifactory Service logs in the Live Artifactory instance. Additionally, if you have set up an email server, the admin user will receive notifications for all the completed operations.
Note
Single-file package types, such as Debian, can be easily archived using simple age-based criteria in the same manner as artifacts. Regarding multiple-file package types, the current version of Artifactory supports package archiving for Docker, Maven, npm, and Gradle package types. If you want to archive other multiple-file package types, JFrog recommends using props/location-based policies on top of time-based policies. To ensure that your packages do not disappear while archiving, use the following 3-step approach:
Tag all the packages/images that are not in use using Property Sets in Artifactory.
Example: 'targeted for archiving'
Move the tagged packages/images to a dedicated repository.
Example: 'Ready_for_archiving'
Create an archiving policy based on:
Property. Example: 'targeted for archiving'
Repository. Example: 'Ready_for_archiving'
Age. Example: Deployed before 3 months, not downloaded during 1 last month
In future versions of Artifactory, more package types will added for archiving.