Buckets and Objects

Buckets

Buckets are the structure where the objects are stored. Buckets do not have a size limit, you can store any number of objects in a bucket, but it is not recommended to store a huge number of objects, this will cause performance issues. Although we recommend storing objects across multiple buckets, there is a limit for bucket numbers. You can use up to 100 buckets if you’re a standard client.
To start using Merlin Storage, you should create a bucket first. While creating a bucket, you choose its name and region. After the creation, a unique URL will be assigned to the bucket which is used to access the public objects inside the bucket.
Bucket names must be valid according to Bucket Naming Rules. Bucket names should be unique among all regions. The name and the region of a bucket cannot be changed after creation.

Every bucket in the Merlin Storage is stored in two separate regions for maximum data reliability and accessibility. A region is the physical location of the storage servers. Merlin Storage servers are located in 4 regions such as; France, Germany, Netherlands, and Turkey. Each location is grouped by two. Germany and Turkey regions work geo-replicated, as well as France and Netherlands.

It is possible to select one of two regional groups while creating a bucket. Let’s say Turkey and Germany are selected and a bucket is created. Once you upload an object to this bucket, the object will be uploaded to the geographically closest region, either Germany or Turkey. Then the object will be sent to the other region and another copy will be stored in this region as well. Even the servers suffer from downtime in one region, the other region keeps serving the storage user. If data inconsistency occurs between two regions, the healthy storage server sends the objects to the other storage server to replace the corrupted ones. Geo-replicated regions increase the reliability, accessibility, and security of the storage service offered by Merlin.

Objects

An object is any file that is stored in the storage service. An MP4 file can be an object as well as static HTML files and images. No file type restriction applies to an object, Merlin Storage allows you to store any kind of data inside your buckets.
Object consists of object data and metadata. The metadata is the key-value pairs that describe the object. The size limit for an object is 5 TB. If you have bigger objects than this storage capacity, you can consider dividing them into chunks and storing them this way.
Objects can be accessed from the storage bucket with public URLs. The visibility of the object can be changed from the interface or CLI. The default visibility for an uploaded object is private. You can set visibility to “public” to make objects publicly visible.
Object versioning allows you to keep different versions of the same object. You can check the version history of an object with timestamps. It is possible to turn back to a specific version of objects.
You can easily delete objects from your bucket through the panel or CLI. Deleting a file is an irreversible and permanent process which means it is completely gone unless it is uploaded again.