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May 4th, 2018 13:00

Is deleting an Atmos Object permanent?

I'm researching whether deleting an object from Atmos (via the AtmosAPI Java library) results in permanent removal of the data, or if there is potential for that data to remain present in the repository post-deletion.  I haven't identified a clear answer to my question based on the material I've read in the EMC Atmos technical manual and this forum.

Could someone provide some insight?

281 Posts

May 8th, 2018 12:00

Deleting an object in Atmos will put the object into the reclamation queue.  When this queue is processed, the database entries and files for the object will be deleted.  So there's a window of time between the delete operation on the API side and the actual deletion of the data on the servers.

After that, Atmos does not implement data shredding so it's theoretically possible that you could do a raw read of the blocks on the disk and recover bytes until the disk space is re-used and overwritten.  With erasure coded objects you'd need to read all of the disks to locate the fragments of the object and reassemble.  Very difficult, but again, theoretically possible.

With ECS you have the option of enabling on-disk encryption that will encrypt each object with a unique key, preventing recovery of deleted data.

3 Posts

May 8th, 2018 14:00

Thank you for the response Jason.  I appreciate you taking the time to do so.

Do you know if it is possible to:

  1. force the deletion without having it go to the reclamation queue?
  2. force the server to process the reclamation queue via the REST API?

281 Posts

May 9th, 2018 07:00

1. No

2. It's always running. You can monitor its depth through the sysadmin console under performance.

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3 Posts

May 9th, 2018 10:00

Thank-you again Jason.  Again, your answers are much appreciated.

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