Swift - object storage service

Inspired by Amazon S3, Swift is a redundant storage system that provides developers and IT teams with secure, durable, and highly scalable cloud storage. A user creates a container and stores static files, also known as objects, in the container. These objects can be anything from pictures or movies to spreadsheets and HTML files. From the end user's perspective, storage is limitless, inexpensive, and accessible via a REST API. Features can also be turned on via the Swift API. These include hosting a static website, versioning, setting specific objects to expire, and even setting Access Control Lists (ACLs) allowing public access to the objects inside the container.

On the backend of Swift, static files (also known as objects) are written to multiple disk drives spread throughout servers in a data center. The Swift software is responsible for ensuring data replication and integrity across the cluster. Should a server or hard drive fail, Swift replicates its contents from other active nodes to a new location in the cluster.