iRODS S3 API
Alan King
Senior Software Developer
iRODS Consortium
June 30 - July 02, 2026
iRODS User Group Meeting 2026
Barcelona, Spain
Overview
- Motivation / Goals
- Architecture / Implementation
- History
- Release updates
- 0.4.0
- 0.5.0
- 0.6.0
- Future Work
Motivation / Goals
- Present iRODS as the S3 protocol
- Multi-user / Multi-bucket
- Load Balancer friendly
- Maintainable
- Performance similar to other S3 backends
Architecture / Implementation
- Single binary
- Single configuration file
- Shipped as Docker image
- Multi-user / Multi-bucket
- Requires rodsadmin credentials
History
Aug 2021
S3 Working Group
Nov 2023
0.1.0
Mar 2024
0.2.0
Oct 2024
0.3.0
Aug 2025
0.4.0
Nov 2025
0.5.0
Jun 2026
0.6.0
Nov 2024
Last S3 API talk
Mar 2026
S3 Working Group ends
0.4.0 (August 2025)
- Added iRODS 5 compatibility
- Server configuration validated on startup
- Added presigned URL support
- Time-limited, anonymous data access
- Enables interoperability between Dataverse and iRODS
0.5.0 (November 2025)
- Added plugin architecture for user mapping and bucket mapping
- Modeled after HTTP API 0.5.0 user mapping changes
- Adjust mappings without restarting S3 API server
- Mapping configurations separated from main config file
- Currently supports local JSON file configs
- Enables dynamic user / bucket mapping (in the future)
0.6.0 (June 2026)
- Basic support for popular Windows-based S3 GUIs
- Tested with S3 Browser and Cyberduck
- Create, list, and delete empty prefixes
- Implemented ListObjects(V1) and some stub endpoints
- Automated build-and-test workflows across iRODS versions
Future Work
- Dynamic user mapping
- Dynamic bucket mapping
- Additional endpoints:
- Tagging
- ACLs
- Multipart management
- Virtual Hosting-style addressing
- Additional authentication schemes (irods, PAM)
- Performance improvements
Thanks for listening