Core features and use cases of Object Storage

STACKIT Object Storage is built to give you reliable, scalable storage for unstructured data with the flexibility of a standard S3-compatible API. Here are the core features that make it a practical choice for developers and platform teams:

Core features

S3-compatible API

Access and manage your data using the industry-standard S3 API over HTTPS. Any tool, SDK, or library that supports S3, including the AWS CLI, boto3, and s5cmd, works with STACKIT Object Storage without modification.

Buckets and objects

Organize your data in buckets, logical containers that hold your objects. Each object is identified by a unique key within its bucket, carries custom metadata, and stores arbitrary data. The flat-namespace model scales to billions of objects without hierarchical overhead.

Bucket versioning

Protect your data from accidental overwrites and deletions by enabling versioning on a bucket. Every object write creates a version. You can retrieve, restore, or delete specific versions at any time.

Life cycle management

Define rules to automatically expire or transition objects after a set number of days or at a specific date. Life cycle rules can target objects by prefix or tag, keeping your storage costs predictable and your buckets clean.

Encryption at rest

All objects are encrypted at rest using AES-256 by default. If you need to manage your own encryption keys, you can use e.g. server-side encryption with customer-provided keys (SSE-C). To learn more, read Manage encryption.

Bucket policies

Control who can access which buckets and objects using bucket policies, JSON-based access control documents compatible with the S3 policy syntax. Policies support a range of condition operators and permission actions. To learn more, read Manage bucket policies.

Object Lock (write-once, read-many protection)

Prevent deletion or overwriting of objects for a defined retention period using Object Lock. Object Lock supports both COMPLIANCE and GOVERNANCE modes and is suitable for regulatory and compliance use cases. To learn more, read Object Lock.

Presigned URLs

Generate time-limited, signed URLs that grant temporary access to private objects. This lets you share objects with external parties without exposing your credentials or changing bucket permissions.

Use cases

Backup and archive

Store application backups, database dumps, and long-term archives reliably. Life cycle rules let you expire old backups automatically, and replication across Availability Zones keeps your data safe.

Static asset hosting

Serve images, videos, documents, and other static assets from buckets. Presigned URLs control access to individual files on a per-request basis.

Data lake and analytics

Collect and store large volumes of raw data, logs, events, sensor readings, in a central bucket. S3-compatible clients and analytics tools can read directly from Object Storage without additional ETL infrastructure.

Application data storage

Integrate object storage directly into your application using the S3 API. Store user-generated content, file attachments, or configuration artifacts without running your own storage service.

Compliance and regulatory storage

Use Object Lock in COMPLIANCE mode to meet regulatory requirements that mandate immutable, tamper-proof storage. Combined with the project-level Compliance Lock, your data is protected end-to-end.

Disaster recovery

Use bucket versioning and cross-application replication workflows to build a recovery strategy with clearly defined restore points. Versioning ensures you can roll back to any previous object state.