Web acceleration¶

When using Cloud Files for web acceleration, you can use a basic organizational structure to separate your content into different containers based on object type, such as images, css, javascript, videos, or uploaded content.

Building this structure enables you to quickly locate your objects when you need them.

Container management¶

A container is a storage compartment for your data and provides a way for you to organize that data. You can think of a container as a folder in Windows or a directory in Unix. The primary difference between a container and these other file system concepts is that containers cannot be nested.

You can create up to 500,000 containers under your account.

Using multiple containers¶

If you have an extremely large number of objects, it is most effective to store them in multiple containers. When writing large numbers of objects to a single container, the limit of 100 object write requests per second per container may reduce overall performance.

Labeling containers¶

When organizing your containers for an object storage solution, give each container a two-part name:

Identify the container’s contents, such as the segment of the application accessing it.
Attach an incremental number to plan ahead for multiple containers.

For example, if you begin with one container of data related to a personnel-management application, you might someday need multiple containers of data related to that application; labeling the first personnel-related container personnel-00000 makes your labeling standard extensible as your data collection grows.

Keeping a local database of container structure¶

If you have a large number of files, it might be useful to keep a local copy of your container structure and listing. You can do this in a local database, significantly reducing the chance of a naming conflict and location of a specific object. By keeping a local copy of your container structure, you can more easily update objects, if needed, without having to list all your containers to discover which one contains the relevant object. This can significantly reduce the preparation time required for updates.

Keeping a local database is most useful to customers using Cloud Files for an object storage solution, since these are frequently accessed programmatically and will also grow organically over time. This also applies to any site that allows for additional content, such as an uploads section, which may quickly grow beyond expectations.

Pathing¶

Because containers, and their objects, do not nest, there are applications which will fake a folder structure by adding a path to the beginning of the object name.

For object storage, this enables better subdivision of slow growing, closely-grouped data that you are unlikely to divide out again later.

For web acceleration, this enables pathing that displays in the browser. For example, a pathed object named ducks/funny/duckling.jpg would become

http://c123456.r02.cf3.rackcdn.com/ducks/funny/duckling.jpg

Tip

You can use CNAME records to link your Cloud Files container to a branded URL that you display instead of a CDN URL. To learn more about CNAMEs, check out Using CNAMEs with Cloud Files containers.