Upload runnner

The UI provides an improved upload proxy / runner, that provides a possibility for more complicated operations not normally present on the object storage Web interface – these operations include e.g. uploading files into an object storage container, and downloading a whole container with API call.

File Upload

Files can be uploaded to an automatically generated container by drag’n’drop from the container listing page, or by using the upload button on top of the table. There’s no limit on how large the files uploaded can be, but browser performance puts a practical limit somewhere in the neighborhood of 10GiB.

Uploading files to a specific container can be done by opening the container, and uploading while the container is open. This can again be done either by drag’n’drop or using the upload button.

Hint

If complete relative file paths or folder structure is to be preserved, the only option for uploading is drag’n’drop. Only files can be uploaded using the upload button

Hint

Chrome is recommended as the browser of choice when uploading large files, as the File API on Chrome is better implemented. Firefox tends to have issues on files >5GiB, especially with multiple files. Safari is not supported, but should work without problems – same issues present with Firefox apply.

Hint

Mobile devices are not supported for file uploads, but can work. This is, however, not guaranteed.

File Download

The upload runner is used to provide file downloads form shared containers in a similar manner to the way the downloads work from containers owned by the project that is currently active. To the user the download continues to be a simple download link

Container Download

Full containers can be downloaded from the UI using the download button either on the table row in the container listing, or a download button on the top of the table when viewing an open container. Downloading whole containers works the same in both owned and shared containers. The runner archives the container while the download is taking place, in order to prevent additional waiting for an archiving operation to finish. This has the added benefit of not requiring any intermediary storage for the archiving operation on the server side.

Hint

Due to the fact that the archive size can’t be precisely calculated when archiving on the fly, the server is unable to provide a progress bar for a container download. A rough estimate can be generated by calculating the time value from the container size visible in the container listing using the available speed of the connection.

Copying a container

Containers can be copied using the copy button, either on the row of the container in the container listing view, or on top of the table when viewing a specific container. The copy operation can only be performed to a fresh container, to prevent accidental data loss in case of an incomplete copy operation on an object. User can also copy a shared container to the currently activated project.

Hint

The copy operation takes a long time, and is run in the background. The UI navigates back to the normal view after copying is initiated. Thus, the copy operation is eventually consistent.

Hint

The runner validates every copied object against the file checksum present in the object storage backend – thus, if the object is present in the newly created container, it’s guaranteed to have been successfully copied over.

Image of the container replication page when trying to copy over an existing container