Introduction to Swift, the OpenStack object store

Swift is the object store service for OpenStack which can be used to store redundant, scalable data on clusters of servers that are capable of storing petabytes of data. It provides a fully distributed, API-accessible storage platform that can be integrated directly into applications or used for backup, archiving and data retention. Swift uses a distributed architecture with no central point of control, which makes it highly available, distributed and eventually a consistent object storage solution. It is ideal for storing unstructured data which can grow without bounds and can be retrieved and updated.

Data is written to multiple nodes that extend to different zones for ensuring data replication and integrity across the cluster. Clusters can scale horizontally by adding new nodes. In case of node failure, the data is replicated to other active nodes.

Swift organizes data in a hierarchy. It accounts for the stored list of containers, containers...