Comment on Garage - S3-compatible Object Storage alternative to Minio
suicidaleggroll@lemm.ee 1 week ago
I’ve always wondered - and figured here is a good a place to ask as anywhere else - what’s the advantage of object storage vs just keeping your data on a normal filesystem?
Object storage is indeed a specialized filesystem in a trenchcoat.
Object storage is typically (but not always) associated with non-hierarchical key-value lookups, as opposed to the directory tree pattern most file systems use. Object storage systems are also typically (but not always) designed with sharding and distribution in mind.
One sentence answer: “Object storage manages data as discrete units called objects with unique identifiers and metadata, while file storage organizes data in a hierarchical structure of files and folders.”
fwiw, I see object storage used as a way to manage data regardless of the file system. It is designed to scale, as opposed to the file system, in large cloud environments.
Here is a recap from Google Cloud:
Object storage, also known as object-based storage, is a computer data storage architecture designed to handle large amounts of unstructured data. Unlike other architectures, it designates data as distinct units, bundled with metadata and a unique identifier that can be used to locate and access each data unit.
These units—or objects—can be stored on-premises, but are typically stored in the cloud, making them easily accessible from anywhere. Due to object storage’s scale-out capabilities, there are few limits to its scalability, and it’s less costly to store large data volumes than other options, such as block storage.
Much of today’s data is unstructured: email, media and audio files, web pages, sensor data, and other types of digital content that do not fit easily into traditional databases. As a result, finding efficient and affordable ways to store and manage it has become problematic. Increasingly, object storage has become the preferred method for storing static content, data arches, and backups.
I’m yet to find a project that actually uses it to good use where a regular filesystem wouldn’t be appropriate. The only situation it seems to be intended for is “big data” as in huge huge huge files that would otherwise trip up and choke standard filesystems.
For us regular folk it seems pointless. And I say that as someone who has used it for various things and just not found it worth it.
gottafixthat@mstdn.social 1 week ago
@suicidaleggroll @kiol Depends on the application, but portability and data safety are two a prime reasons. It's also much easier to scale with docker swarm or kubernetes for business applications, that way the data isn't tied to a particular host.