# Space lifecycle

Nuvolos provides automated lifecycle management for spaces to optimize storage costs and ensure data availability and data protection compliance according to the specific needs of educational and research environments. The lifecycle behavior is determined by the project type.

### Courses

Educational spaces are designed with a fixed operational window to match the academic cycle.

* **Active Period**: Upon creation, **an education space is available for full use for 9 months**. During this time, users can run applications, manage data, and create snapshots as normal.
* **Archival**: After the 9-month period, the space is automatically archived.
  * **Data Preservation**: All data present at the time of archival is moved into cold storage.
  * **Application Access**: Applications can no longer be launched or run within an archived space.
* **Retention Period**: Archived education spaces are **retained in cold storage for 12 months**. This period is intended to accommodate the reuse of teaching materials for subsequent semesters or to address student queries and grade appeals.
* **Manual Adjustment**: Administrators can bring the archival date forward by manually adjusting the space's expiration settings in the administration panel.

For further details, please refer to our guide on [archival](/user-guides/education-guides/archiving-your-course.md).

### Research Spaces

Research spaces are built for long-term data persistence but include features to reduce costs during periods of inactivity.

* **Availability**: By default, research spaces remain available and "Live" indefinitely.
* **Automated Resting**: Organizations can request the activation of an automatic resting feature at the organizational level. When active:
  * **Inactivity Trigger**: Any space that remains inactive (no applications started) for 30 days is automatically moved to resting storage.
  * **Reactivation**: Users can "wake up" a resting space in two ways:
    1. Explicitly triggering a stop of the resting state via the Nuvolos UI.
    2. Attempting to run any application within the space.
  * **Recovery Time**: Moving data from resting storage back to the high-performance Nuvolos file system involves a short recovery time. Users will see a "Waking" status and should wait for the process to complete before applications become fully responsive.

For further details, please refer to our guide on [resting](/administration/space-management/resting-spaces.md).


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