Introduction to AFM to cloud object storage
The AFM to cloud object storage is an IBM Spectrum Scale feature that enables placement of files or objects in an IBM Spectrum Scale cluster to a cloud object storage.
Cloud object services such as Amazon S3, IBM Cloud® Object Storage, and Microsoft Azure Blob storage offer industry-leading scalability, data availability, security, and performance. AFM to cloud object storage supports Amazon S3 and IBM Cloud Object Storage . Amazon S3 and IBM Cloud Object Storage offer industry-leading scalability, data availability, security, and performance The AFM to cloud object storage allows associating an IBM Spectrum Scale fileset with a cloud object storage. Customers use a cloud object storage to run workloads such as mobile applications, backup and restore, enterprise applications, and big data analytics, file server. These workloads can be cached on AFM to cloud object storage filesets for faster computation and synchronize back to the cloud object storage server.
The front-end for object applications is an AFM to cloud object storage fileset with the data exchange between the fileset and cloud object storage buckets through the AFM to cloud object storage in the background by providing high performance for the object applications. Object applications can also span across AFM to cloud object storage filesets and on a cloud object storage. Both the fileset and the cloud object storage can be used as a backup of important data.
The AFM to cloud object storage on an IBM Spectrum Scale fileset becomes an extension of cloud object storage buckets for high-performance or used objects. Depending upon the modes of AFM to cloud object storage fileset configurations, objects required for applications such as AI and big data analytics can be downloaded, worked upon, and can be uploaded to a cloud object storage. The objects that are created by applications can be synchronized to the objects on a cloud object storage asynchronously. An AFM to cloud object storage fileset can cache only metadata or both metadata and data.
The AFM to cloud object storage also allows data center administrators to free the IBM Spectrum Scale storage capacity by moving less useful data to the cloud storage. This feature reduces capital and operational expenditures. The AFM-based cache eviction feature can be used to improve the storage capacity manually and by using policies. For more information about the AFM cache eviction, see Cache eviction.
The AFM to cloud object storage uses the same underlying infrastructure as AFM. For more information, see Active File Management.
The AFM to cloud object storage is available on all IBM Spectrum Scale editions.