Orbit is our highly durable object storage service which is used to store Cloud Server and Cloud SQL snapshots, and also provides an API that customers can use directly for their own use cases. Commonly it’s used for storing assets uploaded to web applications, but it’s often used for backups, archiving log files etc.
Orbit is based on OpenStack Swift, which is the primary supported API. The Swift API is easy to implement and well supported in client libraries and applications. However, the S3 object storage protocol is more widely adopted and there are some situations where using the Swift protocol can be going against the grain.
So, today, we’re pleased to announce an S3 compatible API for Orbit. It supports most of the basic features of S3 and just maps onto Orbit, so your data is still stored in the same containers and can be accessed through the Swift API at the same time.
Authentication works in much the same way except you can only use API Client credentials, not User credentials. You’ll need to reset secrets on any existing API Clients (or just create new API Clients and switch to those) before they’ll work. The standard Orbit authentication system is not affected, you don’t need to reset any API Clients secrets and you can still use your User credentials for that.
S3 compatibility is available today in beta, so just configure your S3 tools to
use Orbit, set the region to our region code (gb1) and you’re away:
$ s3cmd --region=gb1 --host=orbit.brightbox.com --host-bucket=orbit.brightbox.com \
--access_key=cli-aaaaa --secret_key=xxxxxx ls s3://images/
2018-11-25 14:56 248971264 s3://images/img-bpzq5
2018-12-25 15:39 348061696 s3://images/img-cioqp
2018-12-25 15:13 415634438 s3://images/img-iud3s
2019-01-25 14:52 485183431 s3://images/img-8uqwsMore details in the reference documentation. Let us know how you get on with it — we’re keen to hear what you’re using it for.
You can sign up for Brightbox in just a couple of minutes and use your £50 free credit to play with Orbit.