OpenStack Swift

Book excerpt: Get up and running with OpenStack Swift, the free, open source solution for deploying high-performance object storage clusters at scale. In this practical guide, Joe Arnold, co-founder and CEO of SwiftStack, brings you up-to-speed on the basic concepts of object storage and walks you through what you need to know to plan, build, operate, and measure the performance of your own Swift storage system. Object storage is essential today with the growth of web, mobile, and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications. This book helps you through the process, with separate sections on application development, installation, administration, and troubleshooting. Learn Swift’s concepts for organizing, distributing, and serving data Explore basic and advanced features of the Swift RESTful API Delve into Swift’s many client libraries, including useful Python features Write middleware to customize and simplify your storage system Understand requirements for planning a Swift deployment—including your specific use case Learn options for coaxing the best performance from your cluster Get best practices for daily operations, such as monitoring and planning capacity additions Pick up techniques for testing and benchmarking your Swift cluster