A lifecycle policy controls where data resides, how long it remains available, when it is archived or deleted, and how it moves between storage tiers. In an Iceberg lakehouse, these rules align storage decisions with retention obligations, access patterns, governance requirements, and cost targets. section 5.4.8 section 5.2.2
Effective policies commonly define:
- Placement rules that select storage locations or tiers using metadata, access patterns, or organizational requirements. section 5.4.8
- Retention and deletion rules that preserve required data or remove objects after a specified period. section 5.4.8 section 5.2.2
- Tiering and archival actions that reduce storage expense while maintaining required availability and consistency. section 5.4.8 section 5.5.4
- Audit and compliance controls covering both stored data and catalog metadata, including retention and deletion of metadata. section 5.3.2 section 7.2.3
Snapshot-aware tiering
An Iceberg deployment can assign different retention or storage requirements to dataset snapshots, while object-storage rules automatically archive or delete objects to control cost without disrupting availability or consistency. section 5.4.8
