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S3 Service

Switch Cloud S3 (Simple Storage Service) is a scalable object storage service designed for storing, retrieving, and managing large amounts of unstructured data. It is widely used for backups, media storage, application data, and archiving. Our S3-compatible storage service is built on Ceph, an open-source distributed storage system, and is accessible via standard S3 APIs, making it compatible with tools like AWS CLI and s3cmd.

Important

The Portal provides a limited set of actions for managing the S3 service. For advanced data management and additional features, please refer to Switch Cloud S3.

Provision and Use the S3 Service

When you activate the S3 service for your project, the following backend tasks are performed:

  1. S3 Instance Creation: An S3 instance is created with the same name and code as the project.
  2. S3 Account Setup: An account is created on each available SCS3 endpoint using a generated account UID and the S3 instance name.
  3. S3 User Setup: For each account, a user with administrative permissions (full S3, IAM and SNS rights) is created using a generated user UID.
  4. Service Interface in the Portal: Once provisioned, the S3 service page becomes available. From here you can navigate through the following tabs:

Authorisation

Manage Access Keys

Access keys are used to authenticate applications with the S3 API. They act as secure credentials required when using CLI tools such as AWS CLI or Rclone to interact with the S3 service.

Each access key is tied to the provisioned user mentioned above on a specific SCS3 endpoint. You will need to create keys separately for each endpoint.

Create an Access Key

  1. Click Create Access Key.
  2. Enter a Name for the access key.
  3. Copy the Secret Key shown in the popup (you'll only see it once).

Delete an Access Key

  1. Locate the key in the Access Key table.
  2. Click Delete next to the key.
  3. Click Confirm to finalize the deletion.

Further setup details are available under User Authentication.

Bucket Management

Manage Buckets

Buckets are containers for storing objects in the S3 service and are owned by the generated S3 account. They provide a structured way to organise your data and control access to it.

Create a Bucket

  1. Click Create Bucket.
  2. Enter the Name of the new bucket.
  3. (Optional) Enable Object Lock for immutability.
  4. Click Create Bucket.

Delete a Bucket

  1. Click Delete next to the bucket.
  2. Confirm the action in the popup.

Warning

Deleting a bucket is not allowed as long as it contains objects.

Details

View S3 Project Information

The Details tab lists the S3 instance across each available endpoint. Each row includes:

  • S3 Endpoint.
  • Project Name.
  • Status: Active, Creating, Deleting, Failed.
  • Project UID: the unique identifier of your account on this endpoint – useful for creating bucket policies.
  • User UID: the unique identifier of the provisioned user on this endpoint.
  • Updated At and Created At: timestamps.

This multi-endpoint layout helps you track your S3 resources across different SCS3 clusters or storage backends (SSD vs. HDD).

Quota

View Storage Quotas

The Quota tab provides an overview of your storage limits for each S3 account on the available S3 endpoints (e.g., SSD and HDD). From here you can:

  • View the max size available for the S3 account on each endpoint.
  • Track the current usage relative to the maximum allowed.

By default, each endpoint is allocated 10 TiB of storage.

Edit Quota

  1. Click the Edit button.
  2. Set a new value (between 0 TiB and 250 TiB).
  3. Click Save.

If you need more than 250 TiB, please request an increase by contacting cloud-support@switch.ch.