object storage

term

cloud

Storage addressed by key rather than by path or block, with metadata attached and no filesystem semantics.

Dropping the filesystem is what makes it scale: no directories to lock, no partial writes to coordinate, objects replaced whole. That also removes what applications expect - no append, no rename that is not a copy, and eventual rather than immediate agreement in some designs. The recurring security failure is not the technology but the permission: a bucket made public to fix an access problem, and never made private again.

Also known as: s3, bucket

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