openstack-swiftlisted
Install: claude install-skill Tibsfox/gsd-skill-creator
# OpenStack Swift -- Object Storage Service
Swift provides distributed object storage with an HTTP-accessible API. Unlike block storage (Cinder), which provides attached devices, Swift stores objects (files) in containers (buckets) accessible via REST API calls. Swift is S3-compatible when the `s3api` middleware is enabled, making it a drop-in replacement for AWS S3 in many applications.
## Architecture
Swift uses a **ring architecture** to determine where objects are stored. Even in a single-node deployment, understanding rings is important because they control data placement and replication.
- **Rings:** Swift maintains three rings -- account, container, and object. Each ring maps a partition to a set of devices (disks). The ring builder calculates this mapping based on the number of replicas, partition power, and device weights.
- **Partition power:** Determines how many partitions exist (2^power). Higher partition power = more granular distribution but more memory usage. Single-node typically uses partition power 10 (1024 partitions).
- **Replicas:** The number of copies of each object. Production uses 3 replicas across failure zones. Single-node uses 1 replica (no redundancy benefit with one node).
- **Eventual consistency:** Swift is designed around eventual consistency. After a write, reads from different nodes may temporarily return different results. Replicator and auditor processes converge state over time.
**Service components:**
- `swift-proxy`: The API fron