# Object Storage Use Cases Part 1: NFS Server Backups to cPouta S3

DevFeed: [Object Storage Use Cases Part 1: NFS Server Backups to cPouta S3](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/object-storage-use-cases-part-1-nfs-server-backups-to-cpouta-s3-19762.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://cloud.blog.csc.fi/2018/04/object-storage-use-cases-part-1-nfs.html>)

Author: Jukka Nousiainen (noreply@blogger.com)

Published: 2018-04-24T11:20:00Z

Content type: tutorial

Language: en

Sources: [CSC - IT Center For Science - Cloud Team](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/csc-it-center-for-science-cloud-team.md>)

Topics: [Amazon S3](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/amazon-s3.md>), [Server](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/server.md>), [Ansible](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ansible.md>), [configuration-management](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/configuration-management.md>), [ceph](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ceph.md>), [Availability](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/availability.md>), [Ubuntu](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ubuntu.md>), [API](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/api.md>), [cloud-infrastructure](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/cloud-infrastructure.md>)

Tags: [ansible](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ansible.md>), [backups](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/backups.md>), [ceph](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ceph.md>), [object-storage](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/object-storage.md>), [storage](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/storage.md>), [ubuntu](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ubuntu.md>)

## AI overview

This tutorial presents a backup design for NFS shares hosted on a cPouta virtual machine, with backups scheduled to cPouta object storage. It discusses encrypting data before it reaches shared storage, using ZFS, Ansible, S3, and Ubuntu 16.04, and considers failure domains and storage redundancy.

## Source excerpt

After releasing object storage in cPouta, we've been asked quite a lot about various use cases. Thus we're starting a blog series to showcase some of them. Premise A popular design pattern for Pouta users is to host a data storage NFS server in the default project network and back it up to a host on their campus or home organization network. In similar fashion, in this blog post we will be enabling NFS shares from a cPouta Virtual Machine and scheduling backups to cPouta object storage. Since the demand to process biomedical and other types of sensitive data in cloud computing platforms is increasing, we also try to cater for these kind of scenarios by choosing a model where data is encrypted before it lands on any kind of shared storage. The reader is expected to be somewhat familiar with the following concepts: NFS which is used for file sharing within project network ZFS which is used as encrypting file storage Ansible which is used for configuration management S3 as the chosen API for uploading objects. The operating system used in the examples is Ubuntu 16.04. Failure domains One of the most important things to take into account when designing any kind of backup scheme are the failure domains of the underlying systems and services. In cPouta, users can store data in several locations, which map to several failure domains: standard persistent volumes on highly redundant Ceph block storage standard VM root disks on highly redundant Ceph block storage Highly redundant Ceph object storage RAID1 root disks of gpu VM flavors RAID0 root disks of hpc-gen1, hpc-gen2 and io flavors RAID0 ephemeral disks of io flavors Furthermore, all of these resources are currently in the single availability zone called nova. In our scheme, active NFS server data will reside on a dedicated persistent volume. Backups will go to object storage. As for redundancy, currently all backing Ceph pools are configured to replicate three copies of each block or object. Targeted data locations are