IBM Cloud Object Storage connection

To access your data in IBM Cloud Object Storage (COS), create a connection asset for it.

IBM Cloud Object Storage on IBM Cloud provides unstructured data storage for cloud applications. Cloud Object Storage offers S3 API and application binding with regional and cross-regional resiliency.

Create a connection to IBM Cloud Object Storage

To create the connection asset, you need these connection details:

• Bucket name. (Optional. If you do not enter the bucket name, then the credentials must have permission to list all the buckets.)

• Login URL. To find the Login URL:

  1. Go to the Cloud Object Storage Resource list at https://cloud.ibm.com/resources.
  2. Expand the Storage resource.
  3. Click the Cloud Object Storage service, and then click Endpoints in the left panel.
  4. Optional: Use the Select resiliency and Select location menus to filter the choices.
  5. Copy the value of the public endpoint that is in the same region as the bucket that you want to use.
• SSL certificate: (Optional). A self-signed certificate that was created by a tool such as OpenSSL.

Credentials

Use one of the following combination of values for authentication:

• Service credentials
• Resource instance ID and API key
• Resource instance ID, API key, Access key, and Secret key (In this combination, the Resource instance ID and API key are used for authentication. The Access key and Secret key are stored.)
• Access key and Secret key

To find the value for Service credentials:

1. Go to the Cloud Object Storage Resource list at https://cloud.ibm.com/resources.
2. Expand the Storage resource.
3. Click the Cloud Object Storage service, and then click Service credentials in the left panel.
4. Expand the Key name that you want to use.
5. Copy the entire JSON file. Include the opening and closing braces { } symbols.

To find the values for the API key, Access key, Secret key, and the Resource instance ID:

1. Go to the Cloud Object Storage Resource list at https://cloud.ibm.com/resources.
2. Expand the Storage resource.
3. Click the Cloud Object Storage service, and then click Service credentials in the left panel.
4. Expand the Key name that you want to use. Copy the values without the quotation marks:
5. API key: apikey
6. Access key: access_key_id
7. Secret key: secret_access_key
8. Resource instance ID: resource_instance_id

For Credentials and Certificates, you can use secrets if a vault is configured for the platform and the service supports vaults. For information, see Using secrets from vaults in connections.

Choose the method for creating a connection based on where you are in the platform

In a project Click Add to project > Connection. See Adding a connection to a project.

In a catalog Click Add to catalog > Connection. See Adding a connection asset to a catalog.

In a deployment space Click Add to space > Connection. See Adding connections to a deployment space.

In the Platform assets catalog Click New connection. See Adding platform connections.

Next step: Add data assets from the connection

• See Add data from a connection in a project.
• See Add data from a connection in a catalog.

Where you can use this connection

You can use IBM Cloud Object Storage connections in the following workspaces and tools:

Analytics projects

• Data Refinery (Watson Studio or Watson Knowledge Catalog)
• DataStage (DataStage service)
• Decision Optimization (Watson Studio and Watson Machine Learning)
• Metadata import (Watson Knowledge Catalog)
• Notebooks. You can use the insert-to-code function to get the connection credentials and load the data into a data structure. See Load data from data source connections.
• SPSS Modeler (SPSS Modeler service)

Catalogs

• Platform assets catalog
• Other catalogs (Watson Knowledge Catalog). To enable the preview of text and image assets within a catalog, the credentials for the connection must include the access key and the secret key in addition to the API key and the resource instance ID.

Data Virtualization service You can connect to this data source from Data Virtualization.

Connecting to the Cloud Object Storage service with the S3 API

To connect to Cloud Object Storage with the S3 API, you need the Login URL, an Access key and a Secret key.

The API key is a token that is used to call the Watson IoT Platform HTTP APIs. API keys are assigned roles that grant them authorization to call certain sets of HTTP APIs. For more information, see the IBM Cloud Object Storage S3 API documentation.

IBM Cloud Object Storage setup

Getting started with IBM Cloud Object Storage

Restrictions

For DataStage, you must create the Cloud Object Storage credentials with the Hash-based Message Authentication Code (HMAC) option. See Using HMAC credentials.

Supported file types

The IBM Cloud Object Storage connection supports these file types: Avro, CSV, Delimited text, Excel, JSON, ORC, Parquet, SAS, SAV, SHP, and XML.

Parent topic: Supported connections