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The following table provides definitions for some of the terms that are used in this document:
Term | Definition |
Account | A logical construct that corresponds to a business unit, tenant, or project. An IAM account is assigned to object stores for it to create buckets in the object store. |
Buckets | Object containers that are used to control access to objects. |
Chunk | The basic unit in ObjectScale for data storage and protection. A chunk is 128 MB of logical storage that is erasure-coded and written to multiple disks across multiple nodes in the instance. ObjectScale 1.2 and above introduces the capability to reduce the threshold of an erasure coded write chunk from 128 MB to 44 MB. |
Container network interface (CNI) | Plug-in to the Kubernetes API to provide network services for pods, such as creating network interfaces and assigning IP addresses. |
Container storage interface (CSI) | Plug-in to the Kubernetes API to provide persistent storage services for pods using persistent volumes and claims. |
Custom Resource Definition (CRD) | Extension to Kubernetes API resources. ObjectScale adds CRDs that create custom resources with the specified name and schema. |
Dell Common Kubernetes Services (DECKS) | Suite of tools such as Dell SupportAssist Embedded Support Enabler (ESE) for log collection and license resource consumption telemetry. |
Federation | Joins multiple ObjectScale instances. Global information such as endpoints or global accounts is replicated throughout an ObjectScale federation. Within this federation, all ObjectScale instances have a trust relationship established with each other. Any federation member knows about other federation members through ObjectScale Federation Service. |
Horizontal expansion | Expansion of object stores by adding more storage servers to the object store. |
Identity and access management (IAM) | Shared service within an ObjectScale instance used to manage accounts and their IAM entities. |
Kubernetes Application Health Management (KAHM) | Application that provides event persistence management, notifications, and complex event routing rules. |
Kubernetes cluster | Platform that uses redundant control-plane and worker nodes to provide container orchestration and management. |
Kubernetes custom resource | Definition that extends the Kubernetes API and enables ObjectScale to take advantage of native features and provide custom functionality. |
Large object | Object where most of the I/O time is spent accessing the data of the object, and so it is bounded by the performance of the data path and disks. Large objects are 10 MiB or more. |
Namespace | A Kubernetes mechanism for isolating groups of resources within a single cluster. |
Object metadata | The system or user metadata of an object. Object metadata is part of the object version and cannot be updated separately. User metadata is replicated by ObjectScale replication. |
Object store | Each ObjectScale instance deploys one or more object stores. Object stores are created, updated, and deleted independently from all other object stores managed by the shared ObjectScale instance. Kubernetes cluster resources such as storage, CPU, and RAM are defined for each object store based on workload demand inputs that are specified when the object store is created. Resources that are reserved for an object store at creation may be adjusted at any time. |
ObjectScale instance (OSI) | ObjectScale deployed on a Kubernetes cluster. The OSI is a software bundle of services that contains everything that is used to deploy and consume Dell object storage. The ObjectScale instance is deployed once per Kubernetes cluster. It provides management and shared object store services including Identity, Access, and Management (IAM); federation service; and serviceability features such as SupportAssist. |
ObjectScale replication (OSR) | ObjectScale replication allows you to manage and monitor replication policies and replicate bucket data asynchronously. Replication between object stores complies with the S3 protocol of AWS. OSR enables the copying of objects across buckets within ObjectScale instances. You can replicate objects to a single destination bucket or to multiple destination buckets. The destination buckets can be in different ObjectScale instances within the ObjectScale federation or within the same ObjectScale instance as the source bucket. |
Simple Storage Service (S3) | HTTP RESTful protocol created by Amazon Web Services for object storage. S3 uses simple verbs such as Get and Put. |
Storage server (SS) | ObjectScale service that interacts with storage media. In ObjectScale, each physical server is a Kubernetes node, and each SS pod instance is an ObjectScale node. |
SupportAssist | A network-based connection to Dell Support. SupportAssist enables Dell Support to receive telemetry, issues, events, and alerts for the ObjectScale instance, and to perform remote troubleshooting for in timely and efficient resolution. |
Tenant | When an IAM account is added to an object store, the account becomes a tenant within the object store. |
Vertical expansion | An increase in the number of volumes per storage server replica in the object store. |