Accessing Object Storage

Overview¤

Object storage is a data storage architecture that manages data as objects, as opposed to other storage architectures which manages data as a file hierarchy. Each object typically includes the data itself, an amount of metadata and a globally unique identifier which is stored within a bucket.

Buckets are containers for objects. You can have one or more buckets and control who has access to each bucket.

Accessing Object Storage¤

S3 Object Storage can be accessed via a plug-in through VMware Cloud Director and is enabled by default. If you do not have access contact your Customer Success Manager, Sales Executive or AUCloud Support support@aucloud.com.au.
When the plug-in has been enabled, you will be able to access Object Storage and commence creating your buckets. Select Object Storage from the Main Menu.
You will be presented with the dashboard which displays an overall view of your object store including:
- Total Buckets
- Total Objects
- Storage Used
- Users

Note

An AWS specific example on how to make this work using the aws command line tool:

Create an AWS credentials file (have your access_key_id and secret_access_key ready):
```
aws configure --profile=aucloud
```
Test connectivity to the s3 bucket you created previously (assumed in this example to be mybucket, using the CSZ endpoint)
```
aws --profile=aucloud --endpoint-url=https://vos.s3-sz101.australiacloud.com.au/api/v1/s3 s3 ls s3://mybucket
```

Path vs Host based bucket access¤

Files can be accessed using s3, across two methods - host based and path based access.

For a bucket bucket, and a file bar.txt using path based access in AUCloud's SSZ environment. would have a path of:

https://s3-sz201.australiacloud.com.au/api/v1/s3/bucket/bar.txt

using host based access:

https://bucket.s3-sz201.australiacloud.com.au/bar.txt

Note that the result is that each bucket name is globally unique.

Restrictions on host based access

Currently CSZ does not support host based access.