Object Versioning

Object versioning provides data protection against accidental or malicious object update, overwrite, or deletion.

Object versioning is enabled at the bucket level. Versioning directs Object Storage to automatically create an object version each time one of these actions takes place:

A new object is uploaded.
An existing object is overwritten.
When an object is deleted.

You can enable object versioning at bucket creation time or later.

A bucket that is versioning-enabled can have many versions of an object. There is always one latest version of the object and zero or more previous versions.

Object Version Deletion

No object is physically deleted from a bucket that has versioning enabled until you take explicit action to do so.

When you delete an object without targeting a specific version, the latest object version becomes a previous object version and a special delete marker is created that marks the deletion point. A delete marker contains only minimal metadata. If you delete a folder, a delete marker is created for each object in the folder. You can simply delete the delete marker to make that deleted version become the latest object version.

When you upload an object with the same name as the delete marker, the uploaded object becomes the latest version of the object. The delete marker remains. There can be multiple delete markers for an object and you can recover any of the previous object versions.

Object version deletion is different. When you delete an object version, the version is permanently deleted. Permanent deletion also happens if you explicitly delete the latest version by version ID. All delete operations that target a specific object version ID permanently deletes the data.

Scope and Constraints

Versioning can be enabled on a bucket in Object Storage.
You can rename the latest version of an object, but you cannot rename a previous object version. Renaming an object creates a new object.

Interaction Between Versioning and Other Object Storage Features

This section describes some key things you need to know about the interaction between object versioning and other Object Storage features.

Copying Objects

If you copy the latest version of an object to a different bucket, only the object is copied. None of the object's previous versions are copied. You can copy a previous version of an object to another bucket, but that action creates either the latest version of a new object or a new object version in the destination bucket.

Retention Rules

You cannot add retention rules to a bucket that has versioning enabled.
You cannot enable versioning on a bucket with active retention rules.
You can add retention rules to bucket that has versioning suspended. However, you cannot resume versioning with active retention rules.

Troubleshooting Versioning

Unable to Enable Versioning

If enabling versioning fails, the most likely cause is missing or incomplete IAM permissions. Enabling versioning requires:

User permissions that let you use the bucket and manage the objects in that bucket.
Minimally, BUCKET_UPDATE permissions.

Unable to Delete a Bucket

If deleting a bucket fails, the most likely cause is that the bucket is not empty.

You can permanently delete an empty bucket. You cannot delete a bucket that contains any of the following:

Any objects
Previous versions of an object
A multipart upload in progress
A pre-authenticated request

Tip:

When you delete an object in a version-enabled bucket, a previous version of that object is created. Select Show Deleted Objects to display the object versions that might prevent you from deleting the bucket.

Unable to Delete a Previous Version

If deleting a previous object version fails, the most likely cause is missing or incomplete IAM permissions. Object version deletion requires:

User permissions that let you use the bucket and manage the objects in that bucket.
Minimally, OBJECT_VERSION_DELETE permissions.