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This page guides you through how to delete storage buckets within Google Distributed Cloud (GDC) air-gapped environments. It covers prerequisites and methods for deleting buckets through the GDC console and command line interface (CLI). Learn how to delete buckets with retention policies by crypto shredding—a process where you delete the encryption key associated with the storage bucket. This information lets you securely and permanently manage the lifecycle of your object storage, providing data hygiene and compliance
This page is for audiences such as IT admins within the infrastructure operator group or developers within the application operator group who are responsible for managing object storage resources in GDC air-gapped environments. For more information, see Audiences for GDC air-gapped documentation.
Before you begin
A project namespace manages bucket resources in the Management API server. You
must have a project to work with buckets and objects.
You must also have the appropriate bucket permissions to perform the following
operation. See Grant bucket access.
Delete storage buckets
Console
In the navigation menu, click Object Storage.
Click deleteDelete at the end of the row of the bucket to be deleted.
Wait a few minutes and refresh the page to check that the bucket is deleted.
CLI
You can delete storage buckets by using the CLI. Buckets must be empty before
you can delete them.
Use the GET or DESCRIBE command from the View bucket configuration section to get the fully qualified bucket name.
If the bucket is not empty, delete files within the bucket:
Retrieve the information about the AEADKey based on Verify bucket resource creation and follow Delete a key to delete the AEADKey, then the entire bucket would be crypto shredded.
You can run the following command to verify the bucket has been successfully crypto shredded. The BucketReady should be False and Reason to be BucketCryptoShredded.
[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Hard to understand","hardToUnderstand","thumb-down"],["Incorrect information or sample code","incorrectInformationOrSampleCode","thumb-down"],["Missing the information/samples I need","missingTheInformationSamplesINeed","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],["Last updated 2025-08-07 UTC."],[[["\u003cp\u003eThis page details how to delete Google Distributed Cloud (GDC) air-gapped storage buckets, requiring a project namespace and appropriate bucket permissions.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eBuckets with retention policies cannot be deleted until the locked date expires, but they can be crypto shredded beforehand.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eDeleting buckets via the CLI requires them to be empty; files must be removed first using the \u003ccode\u003egdcloud storage rm --recursive\u003c/code\u003e command.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eCrypto shredding a bucket involves deleting its AEADKey, making the data permanently unrecoverable, and this is only available for buckets using \u003ccode\u003ev1\u003c/code\u003e encryption.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eOnce a bucket is crypto shredded the \u003ccode\u003eBucketReady\u003c/code\u003e status will be \u003ccode\u003eFalse\u003c/code\u003e and \u003ccode\u003eReason\u003c/code\u003e to be \u003ccode\u003eBucketCryptoShredded\u003c/code\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n"]]],[],null,[]]