Spaces Object Storage Glossary

Spaces Object Storage is an S3-compatible object storage service. Spaces buckets let you store and serve large amounts of data, and the built-in CDN minimizes page load times and improves performance.


This glossary defines the core concepts behind Spaces to help build your mental model of how Spaces work and understand what the documentation is referring to when it uses certain terminology.

Access-Control-Allow-Credentials is an HTTP header that, when set to true, allows browsers to send identifiable information (such as cookies, authorization headers, and TLS client certificates) with requests.
Access-Control-Allow-Methods is a header request that allows one or more HTTP methods when accessing a resource when responding to a preflight request.
Access-Control-Allow-Origin is an HTTP response header stating whether the application or source requesting access is allowed to access the response content. This header is part of the Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) policy.
Access-Control-Expose-Headers is a header request that allows a server to show which response headers are available to scripts running in the browser.
Access-Control-Max-Age is a header request that determines how long to cache the results of a preflight request.
A bucket is a public cloud storage resource or container that stores objects or data.
CDN
A content delivery network, also known as a content distribution network or CDN, is a geographically-distributed network of servers that deliver static content to users.
The Content Delivery Network (CDN) cache caches content such as images, videos, or web pages in a proxy server that are more closely located to end users.
A content delivery network (CDN) endpoint is a launching point or destination that is linked to the internet and receives communication and content between multiple servers.
CNAME records, or Canonical Name records, map an alias name to a canonical domain name.
Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) is a mechanism that permits loading resources on other origins, such as a domain, protocol, or port, via HTTP headers.
High Availability (HA) is an approach to infrastructure design focusing on reducing downtime and eliminating single points of failure.
Key
A key, or bucket key, is a unique data key for objects in a bucket.
A pre-signed URL is a connection URL created by an authorized user so that unauthorized users can access restricted resources without sharing credentials.
REST is an approach to building APIs with a set of architectural constraints that make them faster, simpler, and more standardized. RESTful APIs follow the principles built around unique URL and URI resources. RESTful APIs enable caching, scalability, and stateless communication with all of the necessary information in each request.
S3-Compatible Object Storage, or S3 is a storage solution that uses the S3 API.
SSL certificate is a digital document outlining the identity of the website.
TTL
TTL, also known as time to live or hop limit, is the amount of time (also called hops) that a packet exists before being discarded by a router. TTL limits the lifespan of data within a network through attaching a time limit to data.