The present invention relates, generally, to the field of computer networks, and more specifically, to dispersed or cloud storage of object data.
Object storage is a computer data storage architecture that manages data as objects, as opposed to other storage architectures such as file systems and block storage. In an object storage architecture, each object typically includes the data, a variable amount of metadata, and a unique identifier. Object storage may be implemented at the device level, the system level, and the interface level. Object storage seeks to enable capabilities not addressed by other storage architectures, for example, application programming interfaces (APIs) that may be directly programmable by an application manipulating data, a namespace that may span multiple physical devices, and data management functions such as data replication and data distribution.