Object Storage

Definition

Object storage is a data storage architecture that manages data as objects rather than file hierarchies (NAS) or block addresses (SAN). Each object includes the data itself, metadata, and a unique identifier. Object storage excels at massive scale (exabytes), durability (11 nines), and HTTP/S3 API access. Leading platforms include Amazon S3, Azure Blob Storage, MinIO, and Ceph RADOS Gateway.

Written by
Daniel Kovacs

Updated Feb 11, 2026

Ansible

An open-source IT automation tool for configuration management and orchestration, widely used for HPC cluster and data center provisioning.

BeeGFS

A high-performance parallel file system with distributed metadata, simple administration, and built-in high availability for HPC and AI workloads.

Burst Buffer

A fast intermediate storage layer using NVMe SSDs that absorbs I/O bursts between compute nodes and the parallel file system.

Ceph

An open-source distributed storage platform providing unified object, block, and file storage with automatic data distribution and self-healing capabilities.

CXL

Compute Express Link â€” an open interconnect standard enabling high-speed communication and memory sharing between CPUs, accelerators, and memory devices.

Data Lake

A centralized repository storing raw data in its native format at scale, supporting diverse analytics workloads from batch to real-time processing.