Chapter 20. Managing Object Store

Object Store provides a system for data storage that enables users to access the same data, both as an object and as a file, thus simplifying management and controlling storage costs.

Red Hat Storage is based on glusterFS, an open source distributed file system. Object Store technology is built upon OpenStack Swift. OpenStack Swift allows users to store and retrieve files and content through a simple Web Service REST (Representational State Transfer) interface as objects. Red Hat Storage uses glusterFS as a back-end file system for OpenStack Swift. It also leverages on OpenStack Swift's REST interface for storing and retrieving files over the web combined with glusterFS features like scalability and high availability, replication, and elastic volume management for data management at disk level.

Object Store technology enables enterprises to adopt and deploy cloud storage solutions. It allows users to access and modify data as objects from a REST interface along with the ability to access and modify files from NAS interfaces. In addition to decreasing cost and making it faster and easier to access object data, it also delivers massive scalability, high availability and replication of object storage. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) providers can utilize Object Store technology to enable their own cloud storage service. Enterprises can use this technology to accelerate the process of preparing file-based applications for the cloud and simplify new application development for cloud computing environments.

OpenStack Swift is an open source software for creating redundant, scalable object storage using clusters of standardized servers to store petabytes of accessible data. It is not a file system or real-time data storage system, but rather a long-term storage system for a more permanent type of static data that can be retrieved, leveraged, and updated.