SwiftDrive – Mount OpenStack Swift as a Drive on Mac or Windows

OpenStack Object Storage, also known as Swift, is the emerging leader for open-source distributed object storage. Swift lets you run a service much like Amazon S3 atop your own hardware, behind your firewall, controlled by you and your organization. ExpanDrive natively supports the OpenStack Swift API and lets you mount your cluster on Mac or Windows just like a network drive – a SwiftDrive. This lets you move data to and from the object store using your existing workflow, your existing applications and your existing business procedures.

Object storage is not a drop-in replacement for existing RAID arrays and other legacy storage products. You can’t just mount a petabyte Swift cluster using SMB/CIFS. There are some gateway products that are starting to emerge, they are an intermediate solution at best. With ExpanDrive you can directly connect to and browse your Swift install right from within Finder, Explorer or any app on your Mac or PC. You can easily offload data or pull in data that is in cold storage.

Here is a video to help get a better idea of what ExpanDrive does and how it works.

Getting started with ExpanDrive and OpenStack Swift is easy. We support Swift V1 authentication as well as Swift V2 Keystone authentication. Install ExpanDrive and create an OpenStack Swift drive type – you’ll then enter your credentials on a screen that looks like this:


ExpanDrive Openstack Mac
If you enter in a keystone server in the server field [a URL that ends with v2.0] you’ll also see a field to enter your tenant information. Click Validate Credentials to see which storage endpoints you have access to and click connect. You’ll now see a new drive attached to your machine that is directly connected to Swift.