Enforce data retention policies

Implementing data retention policies is crucial for managing and decommissioning resources effectively. It helps organizations to identify, manage, and delete unnecessary or orphaned resources in a timely manner, thus reducing waste and optimizing costs.

Best Practices

• Define Clear Data Retention Policies: Establish clear data retention policies tailored to your organization’s requirements. This ensures that all teams understand data lifecycle management, preventing unintentional storage of unnecessary data and optimizing storage management.
• Automate Resource Cleanup: Utilize automation tools to identify and delete orphaned resources and unnecessary objects. This practice saves time and reduces human errors associated with manual decommissioning, thus streamlining resource management.

Supporting Questions

• Do you have a formal process to review and delete resources that are no longer needed?

Roles and Responsibilities

• Cloud Architect: Responsible for designing the data retention policies and ensuring they align with organizational goals and compliance requirements.
• Operations Team: Manages the implementation of the data retention policies and oversees the automatic deletion process for unnecessary resources.

Artifacts

• Data Retention Policy Document: A formal document detailing the organization’s data retention and deletion policies, outlining the processes for data lifecycle management.

Cloud Services

AWS

• AWS S3: AWS S3 provides lifecycle policies that allow you to automatically transition or delete objects based on your data retention requirements, helping ensure that unnecessary data is systematically managed.
• AWS Lambda: AWS Lambda can be utilized to automate the deletion of orphaned resources and artifacts by running functions based on defined triggers, enhancing operational efficiency.

Question: How do you decommission resources?
Pillar: Cost Optimization (Code: COST)