1. A method comprising: determining a system topology of a distributed storage grid comprising a plurality of storage devices for storing a plurality of objects; presenting, using the system topology, configuration options for one or more rules; presenting a first user interface for specifying, for each rule of the one or more rules, one or more matching criteria, wherein the one or more matching criteria is specified as a set of logical functions using logical operators for comparing specified parameters with at least one of an object metadata value, an object duration value, an object status value, and a value contained in contents of an object of the plurality of objects, wherein presenting the first user interface comprises presenting a dynamic estimate representing how each of the one or more rules impact the system topology; presenting a second user interface for specifying, for each rule of the one or more rules, one or more placement constraints, each placement constraint of the one or more placement constraints specifying a storage device of the plurality of storage devices in which an object should be placed within the system topology; creating at least one data structure summarizing the one or more rules based on the one or more matching criteria and the one or more placement constraints; incorporating the one or more rules summarized in the at least one data structure into any previously existing rules to form updated rules; distributing the updated rules across the system topology; indexing metadata for an existing set of objects in the distributed storage grid to identify objects within the system topology which are affected by the updated rules; and triggering reevaluation of the identified objects to move the identified objects to a different location within the system topology based on the updated rules.