Custom S3 storage

Important: If your S3 storage is already available under one of the predefined storage providers (for example, IBM COS, Ceph, or AWS S3), please use the respective provider instead of the Custom S3 option.

You can configure S3-compatible object storage in watsonx.data by using the Custom S3 Storage option. This feature supports third-party storage providers that implement the S3 API standard.

Note: watsonx.data supports NetApp, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), OpenShift Data Foundation (ODF), Fusion Data Foundation (FDF) , and MinIO AIStor storage.

watsonx.data on IBM Software Hub

watsonx.data Developer edition

If you select Custom S3 Storage from the Storage section, configure the following details:

Field	Description
Display name	Enter the name to be displayed.
Bucket name	Enter the name of your existing bucket.
Region	Enter the S3 storage region if required for access. If not, leave this field blank.
Endpoint Type	Select the endpoint access type. Options are Path style access or Virtual host. Note: Verify which access type your storage uses and select the appropriate option accordingly.
Endpoint	Enter the Endpoint URL. Test connection is enabled when the endpoint is provided. The endpoint represents only the base service endpoint and must be provided in standard base URL format, regardless of whether you select Path style access or Virtual host in the Endpoint Type field. For example, `https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com` or `https://s3.amazonaws.com`. You do not need to modify the endpoint format based on the bucket addressing style. Note: For OCI storage, the endpoint must follow this format: `https://<namespace>.compat.objectstorage.<region>.oraclecloud.com`.
Input method Note: This field is available only when use of secrets from an external vault (HashiCorp) is configured for your connections.	Choose the credential input method: Enter credential manually Use secret from vault To use secrets from an external vault, select the Use secret from vault option and complete the following steps: Click Select secret. Select one or more secrets and click Select.
Access key Secret key	If you are using secrets from vault, then select the Access key and Secret key from the respective drop-down lists. Otherwise, enter your Access key and Secret key in the respective fields.
Connection status	Click the Test connection link to test the bucket connection. If the bucket connection is successful, a success message appears.
Console UI Associate catalog	Console UI Select the checkbox to associate a catalog to the data source. This catalog is automatically associated with your data source and serves as your query interface with the data stored within.
Catalog type / Type	Console UI Catalog type: Select the catalog type from the list. The recommended catalog is Apache Iceberg. The other option for catalog is Apache Hive. Platform UI Type: Select the database type from the list. The recommended database is Apache Iceberg. The other option for database is Apache Hive.
Catalog name / Name	Console UI Catalog name: Enter the name of the catalog. Platform UI Name: Enter the name of the database associated with your data source. The database serves as your query interface with the data stored within.
Base path (optional) Note: This field appears only when you select Apache Iceberg as the data source type.	Enter the base path for the catalog in the object storage. This allows you to associate multiple Iceberg data sources with a single storage. Note: You cannot share a storage between Iceberg and non-Iceberg data sources.
Associate	Click Associate to create the storage.