Data Management Glossary
Object Storage
What is Object Storage?
Object storage, also known as object-based storage, object data storage or cloud storage, is a way of addressing and manipulating data storage as objects. Objects are kept inside a single repository and are not nested in a folder inside other folders.
Each object has a distinct global identifier or key that is unique within its namespace. The access method for object is via URL, which allows object storage to abstract multiple regions, data centers and nodes, for essentially unlimited capacity behind a simple namespace.
Objects, unlike file, have no hierarchy or directories but are stored in a flat namespace. Another key difference versus file is the user or application metadata is in the form of key value pairs. An example of object metadata is when you take a picture with your phone and store to the cloud, it includes metadata such as “device=iphone.”
Object storage can achieve extreme levels of durability by creating multiple copies or implementing erasure coding for data protection. Object storage is also cost-efficient and is a good option for cheap, deep, scale-on-demand storage. While many object storage APIs exist, Amazon’s Simple Storage Service or S3 has become the de-facto standard supported by other public and private cloud storage vendors.
This excerpt from The New Stack explains the benefits in more detail:
The Benefits of Cloud Object Storage for Unstructured Data
Unlike cloud file storage, which delivers high performance for active data with scalability and pay-per-use pricing benefits, cloud object storage is a superb way to save dramatically on rarely used or “cold” data. Object storage was designed to be highly scalable and less costly to store large amounts of data. Unlike file storage, object storage is better for data that is read many times and written or modified rarely, thus making it ideal for use as an archive. Another benefit of migrating data to object storage is using new services, such as cloud AI and ML tools, which are mostly designed to work with objects. The point here is that your data is natively available to these services. Finally, if you move data into immutable storage such as AWS S3 Object Lock, no one can modify or delete it—thus creating an affordable ransomware defense tactic.
Object Storage Solutions
Popular object storage solutions include Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), Google Cloud Storage, Microsoft Azure Blob Storage, IBM Cloud Object Storage.
