OpenStack Swift

OpenStack Swift: Using, Administering, and Developing for Swift Object Storage

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

Table of Contents

Part I. Fundamentals and Architecture
Chapter 1. The Evolution of Storage
Chapter 2. Meet Swift
Chapter 3. Swift’s Data Model and Architecture
Chapter 4. Swift Basics

Part II. Application Design with Swift
Chapter 5. Overview of the Swift API
Chapter 6. Swift Client Libraries
Chapter 7. Advanced API Features
Chapter 8. Developing Swift Middleware

Part III. Installing Swift
Chapter 9. Installing OpenStack Swift from Source
Chapter 10. Installing SwiftStack

Part IV. Planning a Swift Deployment
Chapter 11. Hardware for Swift
Chapter 12. Planning a Swift Deployment
Chapter 13. Authentication and Authorization
Chapter 14. Cluster Tuning and Optimization
Chapter 15. Operating a Swift Cluster

Part V. Debugging and Troubleshooting
Chapter 16. Hardware Failures and Recovery
Chapter 17. Benchmarking