Object Storage

Object storage is a scalable and cost-effective storage solution that is used in Mastodon to store and manage large volumes of unstructured data, such as media files (images, videos, and audio) and static assets. In Mastodon, object storage plays a crucial role in efficiently handling and serving user-uploaded media content.

We use the DigitalOcean Spaces service, which is an S3-compatible object storage provider and includes a content delivery network (CDN) to distribute attached media to multiple points, reducing access latency for users and federated servers.

Example of .env.production configuration settings relevant to DigitalOcean Spaces:

# Object Storage
S3_ENABLED=true
S3_PROTOCOL=https
S3_BUCKET=ourbucketname
S3_REGION=nyc3
S3_HOSTNAME=nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com
S3_ENDPOINT=https://nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=NOTINAMILLI0NYEARS
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=hahahahahahahahahahahahaha
S3_ALIAS_HOST=cdn.vmst.io

Our Spaces is in the DigitalOcean NYC3 data center, which is separate from the rest of the workloads which exist in the TOR1 (Toronto) data center. By default, the items in the Space are accessible through a non-CDN accessible endpoint, but once that is created on the DigitalOcean side, it is set in Mastodon by using the S3_ALIAS_HOST variable.