Storage and Lifecycle

Kwik Vault manages document storage through Index Lifecycle Management (ILM)-style tiering, soft-delete retention, and storage space monitoring to balance performance, compliance, and cost.

Overview

Documents move through storage tiers based on age, access frequency, and department policy. Soft-deleted documents remain recoverable during a configurable retention window before permanent purge.

Logical Folder Structure and Nomenclature

Kwik Vault does not expose a physical folder tree to integrators. Instead, documents are organized by a deterministic logical hierarchy:

{organization}/{department}/{document_category}/{customer_id}/{business_key}/v{version}

The DMS ID (system UUID) is the canonical unique identifier for each document record. The Business Key groups versions of the same logical document. Parent ID in integrator metadata maps to external_id when documents belong to a parent case or application (e.g. loan-app-456 as parent, vkyc:session-123 as child session).

Integrators set external_id to the stable business identifier; use custom_attributes.parent_id when a document links to a parent entity.

Hot and Cold Storage (ILM)

Kwik Vault applies ILM policies similar to Elasticsearch index lifecycle management:

ILM transitions run automatically. Hot-tier documents serve sub-second download latency; cold-tier retrieval may take minutes depending on archive provider.

Department overrides are available for Compliance and Treasury corpora that require extended hot-tier retention.

Soft Delete and Retention Policy

Soft delete moves documents to Trash without immediate blob removal:

Configure trash retention in Configuration. Super admins can recover soft-deleted documents during the retention window.

Storage Space Monitoring

The Deployment module tracks storage consumption:

• Total used / allocated per deployment instance
• Per-department breakdown of blob storage and index size
• Growth projection based on ingest rate and document size assumptions
• ILM tier distribution (hot vs warm vs cold percentage)
• Alert thresholds when usage exceeds 80% of allocated capacity

Super admins review storage metrics on the Deployment page and adjust ILM thresholds or capacity before limits are reached.

Versioning and Overwrite Behavior

Re-ingesting with the same Business Key (source_tag + external_id) does not overwrite the existing record. Instead:

1. A new version is created on the same DMS ID.
2. The prior approved version remains the current version until the new version is approved.
3. Each version stores its own blob in object storage.

See Architecture for the approval state machine.

Benefits

• Cost optimization: ILM moves aged documents to cold tiers without losing retrieval capability.
• Compliance: Retention windows and purge policies align with banking record-keeping rules.
• Operational visibility: Storage monitoring prevents capacity surprises.
• Safe deletion: Soft delete with recovery window protects against accidental data loss.

Next Steps

• Trash: recover or permanently delete soft-deleted documents
• Configuration: retention and ingest settings
• Backup and Disaster Recovery: backup policies per department
• Deployment: storage monitoring and capacity calculator