Unified file and object access overview

Unified file and object access allows use cases where you can access data using object as well as file interfaces.

Some of the key unified file and object access use cases are as follows:

• Accessing object using file interfaces and accessing file using object interfaces helps legacy applications designed for file to start integrating into the object world after data migration.
• It allows storage cloud data which is in form of objects to be accessed using files from applications designed to process files.
• It allows files exported using NFS or SMB, or files available on POSIX, to be accessible as objects using http to the end clients. This enables easy availability of file data on mobile devices such as smart phones or tablets which are more suited to REST based interfaces.
• Multi protocol access for file and object in the same namespace allows supporting and hosting data oceans of different types with multiple access options.

  For information about data oceans, see Protocols support overview: Integration of protocol access methods with GPFS.

• There is a rich set of placement policies for files (using mmapplypolicy) available with IBM Spectrum Scale. With unified file and object access, those placement policies can be leveraged for object data.
• Object stores are suitable for storing large amounts of data because they are highly scalable and they are an economical storage solution. To analyze large amounts of data, advanced analytics systems are used. However, porting the data from an object store to a distributed file system that the analytics system requires is complex and time intensive. For these scenarios, there is a need to access the object data using file interface so that analytics systems can use it.

Unified file and object access allows users to access the same data as an object and as a file. Data can be stored and retrieved through IBM Spectrum Scale for object storage or as files from POSIX, NFS, and SMB interfaces. Unified file and object access is deployed as an object storage policy. Unified file and object access provides the following capabilities to users:

• Ingest data through the object interface and access this data from the file interface

• Ingest data through the file interface and access this data from the object interface

• Ingest and access same data though object and file interfaces concurrently

• Manage authentication and authorization in unified file and object access

For more information, see Unified file and object access in IBM Spectrum Scale.

One of the key advantages of unified file and object access is the placement and naming of objects when stored on the file system. For more information, see File path in unified file and object access.