Object Storage Service (OSS)

Object Storage Service (OSS) is Alibaba Cloud's highly scalable, durable, and cost-effective object storage solution. OSS is the equivalent of AWS S3 or Azure Blob Storage, and is one of the most widely used Alibaba Cloud services.

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What is Object Storage?

Object storage stores data as objects within buckets. Each object consists of:

• Key — a unique name within the bucket (e.g., images/photo.jpg)
• Data — the file content (up to 48.8 TB per object)
• Metadata — information about the object (content type, custom headers, etc.)

Unlike file systems, object storage uses a flat namespace — there are no real directories, although you can use key prefixes to simulate a folder structure.

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Buckets

A bucket is a container for objects. Key properties:

• Globally unique name — bucket names must be unique across all of Alibaba Cloud
• Region-specific — each bucket is created in a specific region
• Unlimited objects — no limit on the number of objects in a bucket
• Access control — you can set buckets as private, public-read, or public-read-write

Bucket Naming Rules