ObjectStorageBackends

A Tour of OpenStack Swift Object Storage Backends

We take developers through a tour existing DiskFile backends for OpenStack Swift. The DiskFile interface in Swift is an API for changing how objects are stored physically. Swift provides a default implementation over XFS (Posix), and a reference in-memory example version to help folks get started. The existing Gluster-Swift DiskFile interface is examined in detail showing how a working, external-to-the-project DiskFile implementation compares to the internal Swift project implementation.

We'll go over object storage internals, how the interactions with the API play out, and review and compare the existing DiskFIle backend implementations. Particular attention will paid to the semantics provided by the DiskFile API to the object server code and what an implementation is required to do for smooth integration.