Cloud Archive Swift - Unfreezing your data stored in the Public Cloud Archive

Find out how to unfreeze your archives

Objective

Public Cloud Archive is a cold storage solution designed to host large volumes of data, with no size limit and very attractive pricing.

Since cold storage data is supposed to be rarely accessed, a retrieval request is required, implying a delay prior to recovering the data. This time period varies depending on the age of data and the frequency of data access.

Requirements

Unfreezing via the OVHcloud Control Panel:

OVHcloud Control Panel Access

Direct link:
Navigation path: Public Cloud > Select your project

Unfreezing via python-swiftclient:
- Preparing an environment for using the OpenStack API by installing python-swiftclient
- Setting OpenStack environment variables

Instructions

Unfreezing your object from the Control Panel

Click on Cloud Archive in the left-hand menu.

To unfreeze the archive, click on the button ... to the right of your archive, then Unfreeze to start the retrieval process.

Once the process has started, the date and time your archive will be available is displayed in the Availability column.

Your file will be ready for download after this time period. You can then start the download directly in your browser or via a Swift/SFTP/SCP client.

Unfreezing your object via python-swiftclient

Check the status of the object to download:

swift stat <pca_container> <object>

               Account: AUTH_702xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxdaf
             Container: <pca_container>
                Object: <object>
          Content Type: text/plain
        Content Length: 746
         Last Modified: Tue, 10 Aug 2021 08:39:41 GMT
                  ETag: 51f122f524c46cafcf9628305db99144
            Meta Mtime: 1627974571.298786
         Accept-Ranges: bytes
 X-Ovh-Retrieval-State: sealed
           X-Timestamp: 1628584780.95458
            X-Trans-Id: txbb0eff9ebf9442eab0d02-0061123b5a
X-Openstack-Request-Id: txbb0eff9ebf9442eab0d02-0061123b5a
     X-Iplb-Request-Id: 6DBEFE1E:942A_3626E64B:01BB_61123B59_649EACF:8F28
       X-Iplb-Instance: 12308

The following line indicates that the object is frozen:

X-Ovh-Retrieval-State: sealed

Therefore, the swift download command will return a 429 error:

swift download <pca_container> <object>

Error downloading object '<pca_container>/<object>': Object GET failed: https://storage.gra.cloud.ovh.net/v1/AUTH_702xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxdaf/<pca_container>/<object> 429 Too Many Requests

Relaunching the swift stat command:

swift stat <pca_container> <object>

               Account: AUTH_702xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxdaf
             Container: <pca_container>
                Object: <object>
          Content Type: text/plain
        Content Length: 746
         Last Modified: Tue, 10 Aug 2021 08:39:41 GMT
                  ETag: 51f122f524c46cafcf9628305db99144
            Meta Mtime: 1627974571.298786
         Accept-Ranges: bytes
 X-Ovh-Retrieval-State: unsealing
           X-Timestamp: 1628584780.95458
 X-Ovh-Retrieval-Delay: 14313
            X-Trans-Id: tx9012d12434a447bd81528-0061123c54
X-Openstack-Request-Id: tx9012d12434a447bd81528-0061123c54
     X-Iplb-Request-Id: 6DBEFE1E:94D0_3626E64B:01BB_61123C54_6823B54:10ABF
       X-Iplb-Instance: 12309

The following line indicates that the object is being unfrozen:

X-Ovh-Retrieval-State: unsealing

The next line indicates the time period (in seconds) to wait before retrieving the object:

X-Ovh-Retrieval-Delay: 14313

Once the time period has elapsed:

swift stat <pca_container> <object>

               Account: AUTH_702xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxdaf
             Container: <pca_container>
                Object: <object>
          Content Type: text/plain
        Content Length: 746
         Last Modified: Tue, 10 Aug 2021 08:39:41 GMT
                  ETag: 51f122f524c46cafcf9628305db99144
            Meta Mtime: 1627974571.298786
         Accept-Ranges: bytes
 X-Ovh-Retrieval-State: unsealed
           X-Timestamp: 1628584780.95458
            X-Trans-Id: txaf1eac9ceb8a45efb36e1-0061127482
X-Openstack-Request-Id: txaf1eac9ceb8a45efb36e1-0061127482
     X-Iplb-Request-Id: 6DBEFE1E:ACCC_3626E64B:01BB_61127482_E75B0:1B979
       X-Iplb-Instance: 38343

The following line indicates that the object is now unfrozen:

X-Ovh-Retrieval-State: unsealed

To download the object:

swift download <pca_container> <object>

swift download <pca_container> <object>
<object> [auth 0.961s, headers 1.767s, total 1.768s, 0.001 MB/s]

Automating the object download

Info

This feature requires the at package.

swift download <pca_container> <object>

Error downloading object '<pca_container>/<object>': Object GET failed: https://storage.gra.cloud.ovh.net/v1/AUTH_702xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxdaf/<pca_container>/<object> 429 Too Many Requests

X_OVH_RETRIEVAL_DELAY=$(swift download <pca_container> <object> | awk -F ": " '/X-Ovh-Retrieval-Delay/ {print $2}'
RETRIEVAL_DELAY=$((${X_OVH_RETRIEVAL_DELAY} / 60 + 2))
swift download <pca_container> <object> | at now + ${RETRIEVAL_DELAY} minutes

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