How do I install/emulate object storage locally?

Question

There are 3 storage types I know:

• File Storage (e.g. regular NTFS file system)
• Block Storage (e.g. SQL server installed locally)
• Object Storage

As far as I know, Object Storage is only provided by cloud providers like Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage and Azure Blob Storage.

Is there a way I can install object storage locally?

Answer 1

Yes, you can 'install object storage' locally.

While you can't run S3 or GCS (Google Cloud Storage) or Azure Blob Storage locally, what you can run are object storage solutions that are compatible with S3, GCS and/or Azure Blob Storage.

They do so by adhering to the S3/GCS/Azure Blob Storage interfaces, supporting the same operations and API endpoints. As a side note, S3 and GCP are actually quite interoperable as with a few tweaks, the GCS XML API should technically work with any tool that supports S3.

A couple of solutions exist, including but not limited to (in alphabetical order):

• Azurite (by Microsoft) for Azure Blob Storage
• Ceph (third party) for S3, GCP (using the XML API)
• GCP Storage Emulator (third party) for GCP, possibly S3
• MinIO (third party) for S3, GCP (using the XML API)