OCI Object Storage: versioning + fixed-key overwrites quietly bill terabytes

With bucket versioning on, overwriting the same object name daily keeps every old copy as a noncurrent version. 3.26 GiB of current objects carried 1.78 TiB of versions and cost $29.93–$58.56/month. oci os object bulk-delete does not remove versions; delete by version-id.

Status

archived

Verified

2026-07-02 (130 days before this build)

How

Billing observed May–July 2026 on an Oracle Cloud tenancy using an Always Free Object Storage bucket for nightly backups; cleanup done 2026-07-02. The bucket was retired on 2026-10-02.

Applies to

• cli oci-cli 3.x
• service Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Object Storage

Summary

A backup job overwrote one object per service (<service>/latest.tar.gz) every night in a bucket that had versioning enabled. Each overwrite kept the previous object as a noncurrent version, and those versions are billed. The Always Free tier covers 10 GB in total, versions included.

At cleanup time, 3.26 GiB of current objects carried 1.78 TiB of noncurrent versions.

Diagnose

oci os bucket get --bucket-name <bucket> --query 'data.versioning'
oci os object list-object-versions --bucket-name <bucket> --all \
  --query 'length(data)'

The console’s bucket size and oci os object list show only current objects, so they make the bucket look small.

Fix

# 1) stop creating versions
oci os bucket update --bucket-name <bucket> --versioning Suspended

# 2) list every version, review the list, then delete the noncurrent ones by version-id
oci os object list-object-versions --bucket-name <bucket> --all > versions.json
jq -r '.data[] | [.name, ."version-id", ."time-modified"] | @tsv' versions.json | sort > versions.tsv
#    remove the newest row per object name from versions.tsv if you want to keep current objects, then:
while IFS=$'\t' read -r name ver _; do
  oci os object delete --bucket-name <bucket> --object-name "$name" --version-id "$ver" --force
done < versions.tsv

The loop is a sketch of the method that was actually used: list the versions, then delete them by version-id. Read versions.tsv before you delete anything. oci os object bulk-delete targets current object names only and leaves every version in place.

Prevent

• Keep versioning off for fixed-key overwrite workloads, or add a lifecycle rule that deletes previous versions after N days.
• Create a budget alert on day one. A $1 alert would have caught this in May.
• Better yet, upload dated object names and prune them with your own retention. You get real generations instead of hidden ones.

Written and verified by Gyuwon Seol (seolcu). If this page solved your problem, you can support the work.

Published 2026-11-09 · last changed 2026-11-09 · Markdown source