[Openstack] Cinder vs Swift architecture

saurabh suman 90.suman at gmail.com
Thu Oct 8 11:30:13 UTC 2015


That was certainly some dirty explanation Adam. Thanks :).

What is still unclear to me is the architecture.
In all the above storage technology (File ,block and object ) we have a
physical  a hard drive. Now what are  the layers above them?  Like we must
have a driver ,then we must format it with some file system (FAT32,NTFS or
xfs,). Then what are the layers above them which makes them act as block
storage or object storage or file storage.

Regards,
Saurav


On Tue, Oct 6, 2015 at 12:19 AM, Adam Lawson <alawson at aqorn.com> wrote:

> Hi Ayushi,
>
> The quick and dirty explanation:
>
> Cinder can have different back-ends. With a Linux approach, Cinder uses
> LVM2 to carve up local disks so they can be consumed by virtual machines
> that need to attach to a volume (for data or to boot). A common way for
> VM's to consume these volumes is via iSCSI (see iscsi targets and
> initiators for more details). The end result is the VM's talk to the
> volumes rather than talking to Cinder to get to the data.
>
> Swift also carves up local disks and stores data on them but the data
> itself is accessed using an API (similar to dropbox). No exceptions. VM's
> don't mount the data on the back-end the way they do with Cinder-managed
> volumes, but object storage is instead leveraged for things like user
> storage, enterprise department data storage (similar to
> Accounting/Marketing/IT share drive) or as a back-end for services that
> need a safe place to store files for future use like Glance, Cinder
> backups, Barbican, etc.
>
> In terms of how the disks are consumed on a local machine, Cinder allows
> the VM to mount and format the drive/volume then use however it wants to.
> Swift formats it and presents a pre-formatted volume so you can just drop a
> file and get it later.
>
> Does that help at all?
>
> //adam
>
>
>
>
> *Adam Lawson*
>
> AQORN, Inc.
> 427 North Tatnall Street
> Ste. 58461
> Wilmington, Delaware 19801-2230
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>
>
> On Mon, Oct 5, 2015 at 12:26 AM, Abhishek Shrivastava <
> abhishek at cloudbyte.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi Ayushi,
>>
>> If you had not gone through this link, then please have a look and let us
>> know if it is useful:
>>
>>    -
>>    http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/OpenStack-storage-Cinder-and-Swift-explained
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Oct 5, 2015 at 12:27 PM, Ayushi Kumar <ayushi.03march at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> Even after going through number of links and documents online , I am
>>> unable to understand that exactly
>>>
>>>    - * how file storage , cinder and swift work if I talk in terms of a
>>>    personal computer which has openstack insatlled on it.*
>>>
>>> Can anyone please explain that if I have a hard drive then
>>>
>>>    - * how cinder uses it for block storage and and how swift uses it
>>>    for object storage.*
>>>
>>> Though the difference between the two storage is clear ,I am unable to
>>> understand how the same hard drive is used for both object storage and
>>> block storage .
>>>
>>> Regards
>>> Ayushi
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>>
>> *Thanks & Regards,*
>> *Abhishek*
>> *Cloudbyte Inc. <http://www.cloudbyte.com>*
>>
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>>
>
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