When I issue a delete command I would like the Storage Nodes to securely delete ("shred", overwrite the file a certain # of times) the object/file. The only info I found on delete is that the storage node creates a 0 byte tombstone and unlinks the existing file.
Deletion in Swift is only unlink + tombstone, as you've found out.
Given that some block devices will allocate new sectors on write (SSDs do this), the only way to even come close to file shredding is to unlink the file and then overwrite all the free space on the filesystem, but this (a) will take a really really long time, and (b) requires running as root, so the probability of Swift supporting that is roughly zero.
If you need to ensure that data is truly non-recoverable, the best way is probably to encrypt the data client-side with a unique key for each object, and then destroy the key after deleting the object.
Asked: 2013-10-27 08:38:19 -0600
Seen: 262 times
Last updated: Oct 27 '13
