Adding new Dell EMC ECS Object Storage Plugin for CloudStack

[mhkadhum]

Description

This PR adds support for a Dell EMC ECS S3 object storage plugin for Apache CloudStack. ECS is a software-defined object storage platform that supports both object and file-system protocols, with a focus on scalable and reliable object storage. We have been using ECS in production for three years, and this work extends CloudStack’s existing MinIO plugin to provide similar functionality for ECS.

The implementation supports the full lifecycle of S3-compatible buckets on ECS, including user provisioning, bucket creation, policy management, versioning, creation-time encryption, and integration with CloudStack’s S3 Browser. All functionality has been tested in a lab environment on Ubuntu using a CloudStack development setup based on the official installation guidelines.

Key architectural differences from MinIO:

Management API Integration
ECS requires use of the ECS Management API (port 4443, or 443 when fronted by HAProxy). CloudStack authenticates with management-user credentials to perform bucket and user operations.

Namespace Requirements
A dedicated ECS namespace is required for CloudStack-managed buckets. Multiple namespaces allow different CloudStack environments to share the same ECS cluster.

S3 Endpoints (Public and Private)
ECS exposes S3 services on ports 9020/9021 (non-TLS/TLS). In our deployment, these are routed through HAProxy and exposed externally on port 443. The Public URL is displayed to CloudStack users, while the Private URL is used internally.

TLS Handling
The “Allow Insecure HTTPS” option controls whether CloudStack accepts untrusted certificates when communicating with the ECS Management API.

User Provisioning Workflow
When a CloudStack user creates their first bucket, CloudStack provisions a corresponding ECS object user using the CloudStack UUID with a cs- prefix. ECS generates access and secret keys once, which CloudStack securely stores and reuses for subsequent bucket operations.

Bucket features:

• Encryption: Supported only during bucket creation; CloudStack hides encryption in the update view.
• Bucket Policy: Supports Private and Public configurations.
• Versioning: Fully supported through the S3 API rather than the Management API.
• Object Lock: Not supported in this release; the UI hides the option and API calls return a clear error.

Bucket modification supports quota changes, versioning updates, and policy changes. Encryption is excluded because ECS does not allow changing it after creation.

CloudStack’s S3 Browser supports upload, download, delete, listing, and prefix filtering through the ECS S3 endpoint. ECS prevents deletion of non-empty buckets, and CloudStack surfaces these errors accordingly.

We welcome review and feedback. The development fork is available here:
https://github.com/mhkadhum/cloudstack

Types of changes

• [ ] Breaking change (fix or feature that would cause existing functionality to change)
• [x] New feature (non-breaking change which adds functionality)
• [ ] Bug fix (non-breaking change which fixes an issue)
• [ ] Enhancement (improves an existing feature and functionality)
• [ ] Cleanup (Code refactoring and cleanup, that may add test cases)
• [ ] Build/CI
• [ ] Test (unit or integration test code)

Feature/Enhancement Scale or Bug Severity

Feature/Enhancement Scale

• [x] Major
• [ ] Minor

Bug Severity

• [ ] BLOCKER
• [ ] Critical
• [ ] Major
• [ ] Minor
• [ ] Trivial

Screenshots (if appropriate):

How Has This Been Tested?

The plugin was tested in an Ubuntu-based CloudStack development environment created by cloning the CloudStack source and following the official installation instructions. Testing included:

• Management API authentication and namespace operations
• Object-user provisioning and credential handling
• Bucket creation, deletion, versioning, quota updates, and policy changes
• S3 Browser operations (upload, download, delete, listing, prefix navigation)
• Error handling for invalid configurations and unsupported Object Lock requests
• TLS and insecure-TLS scenarios
• HAProxy-fronted deployments for both Management API and S3 endpoints

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[codecov[bot]]

Codecov Report

:x: Patch coverage is 0% with 1052 lines in your changes missing coverage. Please review. :white_check_mark: Project coverage is 17.53%. Comparing base (8171d95) to head (6e3fb3e). :warning: Report is 30 commits behind head on main.

Files with missing lines	Patch %	Lines
...age/datastore/driver/EcsObjectStoreDriverImpl.java	0.00%	907 Missing :warning:
...tastore/lifecycle/EcsObjectStoreLifeCycleImpl.java	0.00%	132 Missing :warning:
...datastore/provider/EcsObjectStoreProviderImpl.java	0.00%	13 Missing :warning:

Additional details and impacted files

@@             Coverage Diff              @@
##               main   #12124      +/-   ##
============================================
- Coverage     17.56%   17.53%   -0.04%     
- Complexity    15538    15548      +10     
============================================
  Files          5912     5916       +4     
  Lines        529383   530514    +1131     
  Branches      64660    64933     +273     
============================================
+ Hits          92984    93002      +18     
- Misses       425941   427052    +1111     
- Partials      10458    10460       +2     

Flag	Coverage Δ
uitests	3.58% <ø> (-0.01%)	:arrow_down:
unittests	18.59% <0.00%> (-0.04%)	:arrow_down:

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[sureshanaparti]

@mhkadhum can you check the build errors?

[mhkadhum]

Thanks for the feedback!

ive added the missing license headers and ran pre-commit locally, and pushed an updated commit

[DaanHoogland]

looks generally good @mhkadhum , thanks for the contribution. Will you be maintaining this? As it is a 3rd party component and it may require hardware or licenses not available to the project.

[mhkadhum]

looks generally good @mhkadhum , thanks for the contribution. Will you be maintaining this? As it is a 3rd party component and it may require hardware or licenses not available to the project.

Yes, I will be the maintainer for the plugin. I have made a new commit to fix the previous build. Could you kindly review it

[mhkadhum]

Hi, @DaanHoogland @abh1sar Just made the Update talked about in my previous comment with @DaanHoogland The screen displays the token creation request, which responds with the token and expiration details in the response headers. These headers are then utilized in the code to store the token for the specified duration.

X-SDS-AUTH-MAX-AGE

[mhkadhum]

Hello @abh1sar @DaanHoogland
I just wanted to quickly follow up on my last comment. I understand u r probably busy but if u get a chance, could u take a look when possible ? Appreciate the help!

[DaanHoogland]

Hello @abh1sar @DaanHoogland I just wanted to quickly follow up on my last comment. I understand u r probably busy but if u get a chance, could u take a look when possible ? Appreciate the help!

sorry @mhkadhum , this https://github.com/apache/cloudstack/pull/12124#issuecomment-3606486217 you mean right? I didn’t read it as a question and though this is ready for testing. What issues are you having right now?

[mhkadhum]

Hello @abh1sar @DaanHoogland I just wanted to quickly follow up on my last comment. I understand u r probably busy but if u get a chance, could u take a look when possible ? Appreciate the help!

sorry @mhkadhum , this #12124 (comment) you mean right? I didn’t read it as a question and though this is ready for testing. What issues are you having right now?

No worries @DaanHoogland Yes this one. There are no issues at the moment. I am simply checking the status of the PR. Additionally, I am planning to develop another plugin for a different third-party object storage. Do you have an ECS environment where you plan to conduct the testing?

[abh1sar]

Hi @mhkadhum, I am planning to finish my review by early next week.

[DaanHoogland]

Do you have an ECS environment where you plan to conduct the testing?

No, but we will regard this as 3rd party extension and trust you with specific feature testing, only doing regression testing. (sponsored donation in the sense that you make an instance available for testing is welcome, but you maintaining it as even more ;)

[mhkadhum]

Reviewed EcsObjectStoreDriverImpl Overall functionality looks good but there are some comments on code maintainability and organisation. Please check. Overall, I think use of reflections can be avoided in most cases.

Hello @abh1sar Thank you for ur feedback, am working on addressing all the issues u provided.