9b0d117979
Includes: 1. Inclusion of erasure coding info 2. Note about default constraints backport: mitaka Change-Id: Ieae09f432b7186391ddad7124e28e0ab3409c94c Closes-bug: #1596770
34 lines
1.7 KiB
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34 lines
1.7 KiB
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==============================
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Introduction to Object Storage
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Object Storage (swift) is a robust, highly scalable and fault tolerant storage
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platform for unstructured data such as objects. Objects are stored bits,
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accessed through a RESTful, HTTP-based interface. You cannot access data at
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the block or file level. Object Storage is commonly used to archive and back
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up data, with use cases in virtual machine image, photo, video, and music
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storage.
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Object Storage provides a high degree of availability, throughput, and
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performance with its scale out architecture. Each object is replicated across
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multiple servers, residing within the same data center or across data centers,
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which mitigates the risk of network and hardware failure. In the event of
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hardware failure, Object Storage will automatically copy objects to a new
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location to ensure that your chosen number of copies are always available.
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Object Storage also employs erasure coding. Erasure coding is a set of
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algorithms that allows the reconstruction of missing data from a set of
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original data. In theory, erasure coding uses less storage capacity with
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similar durability characteristics as replicas. From an application
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perspective, erasure coding support is transparent. Object Storage
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implements erasure coding as a Storage Policy.
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Object Storage is an eventually consistent distributed storage platform;
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it sacrifices consistency for maximum availability and partition tolerance.
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Object Storage enables you to create a reliable platform by using commodity
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hardware and inexpensive storage.
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For more information, review the key concepts in the developer documentation
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at `docs.openstack.org/developer/swift/
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<http://docs.openstack.org/developer/swift/>`__.
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