Overview

IBM Cloud Object Storage System™ provides various interfaces to store and retrieve objects on an IBM Cloud Object Storage Slicestor® system.

Every object is converted into a set of system-addressable entities called data sources. For every object, a metadata data source and zero or more object data sources exists. Metadata data sources contain system object metadata, while object data sources contain user-supplied object data. If an object is relatively small, all of the object data will be embedded in the metadata object and no data object sources will be generated. In addition, to support name listing operations, the system maintains additional data sources that store a name index.

Each data source undergoes multiple transformations and additional data is added to guarantee data reliability and integrity. The result of these transformations are called slices: pieces of data sufficient to recreate the original data with bit-level accuracy as long as a defined threshold of slices out of the entire defined IDA width are available. Slices are sent to IBM Cloud Object Storage Slicestor® nodes, which persist each slice to a specific disk for long-term data storage. The process by which a IBM Cloud Object Storage Slicestor® appliance organizes, persists, and retrieves slices on a given disk is called a backend storage methodology.