Lifecycle Configuration Standard -- Standard IA -- Glacier Flexible Restore via CloudFormation

Question

We do shared web hosting and my cPanel servers stores backups in S3, each server with its own bucket. cPanel does not have a provision to select the storage class, so everything gets created as Standard. With around 9TB of backups being maintained, I would really like them to be stored as Standard IA after the first couple of days, and then transition to Glacier after they have been in IA for 30 days. The logic here is the backup that is most likely needed would be the most recent. Currently we skip the step of transferring to IA and they go straight to Glacier after 30 days.

According to this page, that kind of multi staged transition should be ok, and it confirms that the transitions from class to class I want are acceptable. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/lifecycle-transition-general-considerations.html

The examples on this page show a transition in days of 1, seeming to show that a newly created object stored in Standard can be transitioned immediately: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/aws-properties-s3-bucket-lifecycleconfig.html

My YAML template for Cloud Formation has this section in it:

```
          - Id: TransitionStorageType
            Status: Enabled
            Transitions:
              - StorageClass: "STANDARD_IA"
                TransitionInDays: 2
              - StorageClass: "GLACIER"
                TransitionInDays: 32
```

When I run the template all of the buckets update with nice green check marks, then the whole stack rolls back without saying what the issue is. If turn that into 2 separate rules like this:

```
          - Id: TransitionStorageIA
            Status: Enabled
            Transitions:
              - StorageClass: "STANDARD_IA"
                TransitionInDays: 2
          - Id: TransitionStorageGlacier
            Status: Enabled
            Transitions:
              - StorageClass: "GLACIER"
                TransitionInDays: 32
```

Then each bucket getting modified errors with: `Days' in Transition action must be greater than or equal to 30 for storageClass 'STANDARD_IA'` but if you look at the rules, it is in Standard IA for 30 days as it doesn't change to Glacier until day 32, and it transitions to Standard IA at day 2.  So that error does not make any sense.

What do I need to do to make this work? My monthly bill is in serious need of some trimming. Thank you.

Accepted Answer

So the devil is in the details, as always.  You can transition from Standard to Glacier from day zero, but if you are transitioning to Standard IA or One Zone IA, then there is a 30 day limit imposed.  I thought this had me stuck without a solution, until I noticed how minuscule the pricing difference is between Glacier Instant Retrieval and Glacier Flexible Retrieval.

This is the Lifecycle policy I ended up going with:
```
      LifecycleConfiguration:
        Rules:
          - Id: AbortIncompleteMultipartUpload
            Status: Enabled
            AbortIncompleteMultipartUpload:
              DaysAfterInitiation: 7
          - Id: RetentionPolicy
            Status: Enabled
            Transitions:
              - StorageClass: "GLACIER_IR"
                TransitionInDays: 7
            ExpirationInDays: 97
```
I hope this can help someone in the future if they have a similar issue.

Lifecycle Configuration Standard --> Standard IA -- Glacier Flexible Restore via CloudFormation

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