- « External Storage authentication mechanisms
- Encryption configuration »

# Primary Storage

It’s possible to use an object store as primary storage, this replaces the default way of storing files in `nextcloud/data` (note that the data directory might still be used for other reasons)

## Implications

When using an object store as primary storage, Nextcloud assumes exclusive access over the bucket being used.

Contrary to using an object store as external storage, when an object store is used as primary storage, no metadata (names, directory structures, etc) is stored in the object store. The metadata is only stored in the database and the object store only holds the file content by unique identifier.

Because of this primary object stores usually perform better than when using the same object store as external storage but it restricts being able to access the files from outside of Nextcloud.

## Configuring

Primary object stores need to be configured in `config.php` by specifying the objectstore backend and any backend specific configuration.

Note

Configuring a primary object store on an existing Nextcloud instance will make all existing files on the instance inaccessible.

The configuration has the following structure.

    'objectstore' => array(
            'class' => 'Object\\Storage\\Backend\\Class',
            'arguments' => array(
                    ...
            ),
    ),

### Openstack Swift

The Swift backend mounts a container on an OpenStack Object Storage server into the virtual filesystem. The class to be used is `\\OC\\Files\\ObjectStore\\Swift`

    'objectstore' => array(
            'class' => 'OC\\Files\\ObjectStore\\Swift',
            'arguments' => array(
                    'username' => 'username',
                    'password' => 'Secr3tPaSSWoRdt7',
                    // the container to store the data in
                    'bucket' => 'nextcloud',
                    'autocreate' => true,
                    'region' => 'RegionOne',
                    // The Identity / Keystone endpoint
                    'url' => 'http://example.com/v2.0',
                    // optional on some swift implementations
                    'tenantName' => 'username',
                    'serviceName' => 'swift',
                    // The Interface / url Type, optional
                    'urlType' => 'internal'
            ),
    ),

## Amazon S3

The S3 backend mounts a bucket on an Amazon S3 Storage or compatible server into the virtual filesystem. The class to be used is `\\OC\\Files\\ObjectStore\\S3`

    'objectstore' => array(
            'class' => 'OC\\Files\\ObjectStore\\S3',
            'arguments' => array(
                    'bucket' => 'nextcloud',
                    'autocreate' => true,
                    'key'    => 'EJ39ITYZEUH5BGWDRUFY',
                    'secret' => 'M5MrXTRjkyMaxXPe2FRXMTfTfbKEnZCu+7uRTVSj',
                    'hostname' => 'example.com',
                    'port' => 1234,
                    'use_ssl' => true,
                    'region' => 'optional',
                    // required for some non amazon s3 implementations
                    'use_path_style' => true,
                    'legacy_auth' => false
            ),
    ),

Not all configuration options are required for all S3 servers. Overriding the hostname, port and region of your S3 server is only required for non-Amazon servers such as Ceph Object Gateway, which in turn usually don’t require the region to be set.

`use_path_style` is usually not required (and is, in fact, incompatible with newer Amazon datacenters), but can be used with non-Amazon servers where the DNS infrastructure cannot be controlled. Ordinarily, requests will be made with http://bucket.hostname.domain/, but with path style enabled, requests are made with http://hostname.domain/bucket instead.

`legacy_auth` is only required for S3 servers that only implement version 2 authentication, on default version 4 authentication will be used.

## Multibucket Object Store

It’s possible to configure Nextcloud to distribute it’s data over multiple buckets for scalability purpose.

To setup multiple buckets, `config.php` needs to be configured using `'objectstore_multibucket'`

    'objectstore_multibucket' => array(
            'class' => 'Object\\Storage\\Backend\\Class',
            'arguments' => array(
                    // optional, defaults to 64
                    'num_buckets' => 64,
                    // will be prefixed by an integer in the range from 0 to (num_nuckets-1)
                    'bucket' => 'nextcloud_',
                    ...
            ),
    ),

Nextcloud will map every user to a range of buckets and save all files for that user in it’s respective bucket.

Note

Changing the number of buckets for an existing Nextcloud instance is supported but the mapping from users to buckets is persistent so only newly created users will be mapped to the updated range of buckets.

- « External Storage authentication mechanisms
- Encryption configuration »