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The Amazon S3 API was originally developed as the data-access interface of Amazon S3. As applications were developed using the S3 API, it became a common standard for object storage. This document refers to the S3 API for object storage as the S3 protocol. This provides consistent nomenclature along with other NAS protocols regarding the OneFS file service.
Figure 1 shows the traditional scale-up NAS platform and the emerging object-storage architecture. The traditional scale-up NAS platform is only accessible through file protocols and is not easy to scale as the performance requirement increases. The object storage allows both file and object access, but the file access is achieved through a gateway, with either a software daemon or additional dedicated hardware. This limits file-access performance compared to a traditional NAS platform.
This is where PowerScale scale-out storage comes in. With the introduction of the OneFS S3 protocol, PowerScale combines the advantages of both platform types into a single storage system while providing performance for file and object access.
Starting with OneFS version 9.0, PowerScale OneFS supports the native S3 protocol. OneFS implements S3 as a first-class protocol along with other protocols, including NFS, SMB, and HDFS. The S3 protocol is implemented over HTTP and secure HTTP (HTTPS). Through OneFS S3, you can access file-based data stored on your OneFS cluster as objects. Since the S3 API is considered to be a protocol, content and metadata can be ingested using S3 and concurrently accessed through other protocols that are configured on the cluster.
Note: The OneFS S3 service is disabled by default. If the service is enabled, it only listens on port 9021 for HTTPS. Port 9020 for HTTP is disabled by default. These ports are configurable through the OneFS WebUI and CLI.
In OneFS 9.0, each S3 bucket is mapped to a directory under an access zone base path, each S3 object is mapped to a file, and the associated object prefix is mapped to directories. A directory for a bucket is created under the access zone base path by default. See the AWS S3 documentation regarding S3 bucket and object definition.
OneFS 9.0 provides the following new S3 features: