VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension is a standalone middleware service that you install in your data center to provide object storage capabilities to the users of VMware Cloud Director.

Architecture of VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension

During installation and configuration, the user interface of VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension registers as a user interface plug-in to VMware Cloud Director by using the Portal Extensibility Framework. As a result, you can access the user interface of VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension directly from the VMware Cloud Director cloud provider admin portal as a system administrator and from the VMware Cloud Director tenant portal as an organization user.

You can configure VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension to work with AWS S3, Cloudian HyperStore, Dell EMC ECS, and any S3-compatible storage platform with the Object Storage Interoperability Service.

You can switch between storage platforms that you use with VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension, but cannot use two storage platforms at the same time.

An instance of VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension can work with a single instance of VMware Cloud Director or a single VMware Cloud Director server group, but you can deploy multiple VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension for multi-region S3 support.

The following diagram illustrates the architecture of VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension and the network connections between the components.


An architecture diagram, which shows how all components work together to deliver object storage capabilities to VMware Cloud Director users.

Components of VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension with virtual machine deployment

VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension with virtual machine deployment consists of four components.

Table 1. Components of VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension
Component Description
Object Storage Interoperability Service (OSIS)

The service used for integrating any S3-compatible storage platform to VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension.

This component is brought by the VMware Partner Program for Object Storage Extension partners who support OSIS. For more information, see the VMware Object Storage Interoperability Service Development Guide.
VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension Service The public service of VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension that provides the APIs for the data path and the control path on port 443. For the virtual machine deployment, each service node is a standalone process running on the Linux machine.
VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension Keeper (voss-keeper) Service The system service for the VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension service and the ose command-line utility. The voss-keeper service runs as a system service and you can manage it by using the systemctl command-line utility.

Stopping the voss-keeper service also stops the VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension service on port 443.

  • Installs and starts the VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension middleware service and the user interface plug-in.
  • Monitors the health of the Java daemon that VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension uses.
  • Synchronizes the configuration between VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension nodes within a cluster.
  • Installs and starts the internal virtual IP translation server.
Command-Line Utility (ose) Contains the scripts required for configuring VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension and starting or stopping the Java daemon.

Roles and Rights in VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension

Any user with an account that is activated from VMware Cloud Director perspective can access VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension.

The items you see and the actions you can perform depend on the rights assigned to your user profile within a VMware Cloud Director organization.

The rights assigned to your user profile in VMware Cloud Director define your user role in VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension.

The following table contains the mapping between VMware Cloud Director rights and VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension roles.

Table 2. Mapping Between VMware Cloud Director Rights and VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension Roles
VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension Tenant Portal Role VMware Cloud Director Rights Notes
Provider Administrator
  • General: Administrator View
  • Provider VDC: View
  • Organization VDC: View
  • UI Plugins: View
None.
Tenant Administrator
  • General: Administrator View
  • Organization VDC: View
  • UI Plugins: View
Tenant administrators in VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension must not have the Provider VDC: View role assigned to their user account in VMware Cloud Director. If you assign the Provider VDC: View role to a Tenant Administrator, the user role in VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension changes to Provider Administrator.
Tenant User UI Plugins: View Tenant users in VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension must not have the General: Administrator View and the General: Administrator View roles assigned to their user account in VMware Cloud Director. If you assign these roles to a Tenant User, the user role in VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension changes to Tenant Administrator.

For information about the predefined roles and their rights in VMware Cloud Director, see Predefined Roles and Their Rights.