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25.2. Components of Object Store

The major components of Object Storage are:
Proxy Server
The Proxy Server is responsible for connecting to the rest of the OpenStack Object Storage architecture. For each request, it looks up the location of the account, container, or object in the ring and routes the request accordingly. The public API is also exposed through the proxy server. When objects are streamed to or from an object server, they are streamed directly through the proxy server to or from the user – the proxy server does not spool them.
The Ring
The Ring maps swift accounts to the appropriate Red Hat Gluster Storage volume. When other components need to perform any operation on an object, container, or account, they need to interact with the Ring to determine the correct Red Hat Gluster Storage volume.
Object and Object Server
An object is the basic storage entity and any optional metadata that represents the data you store. When you upload data, the data is stored as-is (with no compression or encryption).
The Object Server is a very simple storage server that can store, retrieve, and delete objects stored on local devices.
Container and Container Server
A container is a storage compartment for your data and provides a way for you to organize your data. Containers can be visualized as directories in a Linux system. However, unlike directories, containers cannot be nested. Data must be stored in a container and hence the objects are created within a container.
The Container Server’s primary job is to handle listings of objects. The listing is done by querying the glusterFS mount point with a path. This query returns a list of all files and directories present under that container.
Accounts and Account Servers
The OpenStack Swift system is designed to be used by many different storage consumers.
The Account Server is very similar to the Container Server, except that it is responsible for listing containers rather than objects. In Object Store, each Red Hat Gluster Storage volume is an account.
Authentication and Access Permissions
Object Store provides an option of using an authentication service to authenticate and authorize user access. Once the authentication service correctly identifies the user, it will provide a token which must be passed to Object Store for all subsequent container and object operations.
Other than using your own authentication services, the following authentication services are supported by Object Store:
  • Authenticate Object Store against an external OpenStack Keystone server.
    Each Red Hat Gluster Storage volume is mapped to a single account. Each account can have multiple users with different privileges based on the group and role they are assigned to. After authenticating using accountname:username and password, user is issued a token which will be used for all subsequent REST requests.
    Integration with Keystone

    When you integrate Red Hat Gluster Storage Object Store with Keystone authentication, you must ensure that the Swift account name and Red Hat Gluster Storage volume name are the same. It is common that Red Hat Gluster Storage volumes are created before exposing them through the Red Hat Gluster Storage Object Store.

    When working with Keystone, account names are defined by Keystone as the tenant id. You must create the Red Hat Gluster Storage volume using the Keystone tenant id as the name of the volume. This means, you must create the Keystone tenant before creating a Red Hat Gluster Storage Volume.

    Important

    Red Hat Gluster Storage does not contain any Keystone server components. It only acts as a Keystone client. After you create a volume for Keystone, ensure to export this volume for accessing it using the object storage interface. For more information on exporting volume, see Section 25.6.8, “Exporting the Red Hat Gluster Storage Volumes”.
    Integration with GSwauth

    GSwauth is a Web Server Gateway Interface (WGSI) middleware that uses a Red Hat Gluster Storage Volume itself as its backing store to maintain its metadata. The benefit in this authentication service is to have the metadata available to all proxy servers and saving the data to a Red Hat Gluster Storage volume.

    To protect the metadata, the Red Hat Gluster Storage volume should only be able to be mounted by the systems running the proxy servers. For more information on mounting volumes, see Chapter 7, Accessing Data - Setting Up Clients.
    Integration with TempAuth

    You can also use the TempAuth authentication service to test Red Hat Gluster Storage Object Store in the data center.