德瑞克的技術大小事: Object-Storage vs Block-Storage Comparison in OpenStack Folsom version

2013年4月23日星期二

Object Storage Capabilities

OpenStack provides redundant, scalable object storage using clusters of standardized servers capable of storing petabytes of data
Object Storage is not a traditional file system, but rather a distributed storage system for static data such as virtual machine images, photo storage, email storage, backups and archives. Having no central "brain" or master point of control provides greater scalability, redundancy and durability.
Objects and files are written to multiple disk drives spread throughout servers in the data center, with the OpenStack software responsible for ensuring data replication and integrity across the cluster.
Storage clusters scale horizontally simply by adding new servers. Should a server or hard drive fail, OpenStack replicates its content from other active nodes to new locations in the cluster. Because OpenStack uses software logic to ensure data replication and distribution across different devices, inexpensive commodity hard drives and servers can be used in lieu of more expensive equipment.

OpenStack provides persistent block level storage devices for use with OpenStack compute instances.
The block storage system manages the creation / attaching / detaching of the block devices to servers. Block storage volumes are fully integrated into OpenStack Compute and the Dashboard allowing for cloud users to manage their own storage needs.
In addition to using simple Linux server storage, it has unified storage support for numerous storage platforms including Ceph, NetApp, Nexenta, SolidFire, and Zadara.
Block storage is appropriate for performance sensitive scenarios such as database storage, expandable file systems, or providing a server with access to raw block level storage.
Snapshot management provides powerful functionality for backing up data stored on block storage volumes. Snapshots can be restored or used to create a new block storage volume.

而Rackspace所提供的Cloud Block Storage服務，就是利用OpenStack去打造的。