External object storage is best used to store the following types of tables:
- Tables that are large
- Tables that support analytics and long-running queries
- Tables that are the object of ETL (Extract, Transform and Load) processes
Object storage in VantageCloud Lake is divided into two areas:
- The Object File System, a new file system that manages database tables accessible from and shared by both primary clusters and compute clusters within an Environment.
It supports inserts, updates, and deletes on database objects while using the cloud object storage to persist the data.
- External object storage that is accessed using Native Object Store (NOS) capabilities. This storage is used to store external data that is owned and managed outside the database by the customers or other third parties. External object storage data is available from any cluster.
It supports reading from and writing to external objects in those stores.
Benefits of using object storage:
- Data stored in object storage is shared among primary clusters and compute clusters. For example, different department teams can share tables stored in object storage.
- Moving the bulk of customer data to object storage, as opposed to keeping it all in persistent block-level data storage contributes to greater customer return on investment.
- Object storage provides customers with object based storage options, which can be scaled up as needed.
- Object storage enables multiple teams to share one copy of the same data. This reduces the need for admins to copy and store duplicated data, and it lowers the risk of users accidentally using stale copies of the data.