Welcome to the VMware Cloud Director® Object Storage Extension™ documentation page.

VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension is an integrated storage solution that is provisioned and managed within the VMware Cloud Director framework.

VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension is a standalone middleware service that runs atop of a storage cluster or AWS S3 and provides object storage capabilities to the users of VMware Cloud Director.

Service providers can deploy VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension as a solution add-on, by using the VMware Cloud Director Solution Add-On Landing zone, or to a Linux OS machine, by using the CLI.

VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension supports Cloudian HyperStore, DELL ECS, and Amazon native S3 platforms. You can also integrate any S3 compliant object storage platform using an extension point called Object Storage Interoperability Service (OSIS). OSIS defines a set of management API specifications for VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension to communicate with third-party object storage platforms and exchange tenant and user information.

By using OSIS, cloud providers can provide their tenants with a range of VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension-certified storage options. Partners can join the VMware Partner Program for Object Storage Extension. The program allows partners to certify their OSIS implementations, known as an OSIS adapter by using the VMware offered certification kit for validation. For more information, see the VMware Partner Program for Object Storage Extension and the VMware Object Storage Interoperability Service Development Guide.

The following diagram illustrates the architecture of VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension with Linux package deployment, and the network connections between VMware and storage platform components.


The diagram shows how all Object Storage Extension components work together to deliver object storage capabilities to VMware Cloud Director users.

What's New in the VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension Documentation

VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension version 3.1 includes the following new features:
  • MinIO Support

    Service providers can prepare a MinIO cluster in an external Kubernetes cluster, then use the VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension deployment flow to provision the MinIO integration in VMware Cloud Director.

  • Client IP Forwarding

    You can forward the VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension API client IPs to the underlying storage platform. You can use client IP forwarding by bucket owners to define client IP allow or deny policies on buckets. Client IP forwarding is not activated by default and it depends on the storage platform's capability to accept forwarded client IPs.

  • Kubernetes Backup and Restore Enhancement

    VMware Cloud Director Object Storage extension refreshes the Kubernetes Backup and Restore UI, provides more details of individual backups and restores, and it simplifies the states and transition for Kubernetes backup.

  • OSIS Enhancement

    VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension's OSIS (Object Storage Interoperability Service) now supports the S3-compliant storage vendors which assign tenant specific S3 endpoints for newly created storage tenants. OSIS also allows to onboard storage tenants in an asynchronous manner.

Other Resources

VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension 3.1
External Resources