15. QuantaGrid — browsing your own cloud storage¶

Part 15

QuantaGrid is a different tool from QuantaDrive. Instead of managed workspaces, it gives you a direct browser onto your organisation’s own cloud storage — Amazon S3 buckets and Azure Blob containers. You will only see it if it is entitled to your account.

What you can reach in QuantaGrid is decided by your own cloud access, not by QuantaCloud. A bucket your account cannot read is listed but marked Access denied.

15.1. Choosing a storage provider¶

The Choose a storage provider screen with Amazon S3 and Azure Blob cards. — The provider chooser, shown when more than one provider is configured.¶

Opening QuantaGrid shows Choose a storage provider — Your organization has more than one provider configured. Select where you want to browse storage.

Amazon S3: Browse S3 buckets with your AWS IAM Identity Center access.
Azure Blob: Browse Blob containers with your Azure Entra access.

Click a card to enter. If your organisation has only one provider configured, you go straight in without being asked.

15.2. The Explorer¶

The QuantaGrid Explorer sidebar listing buckets with their regions. — The **Explorer** sidebar. Buckets are listed with their region underneath; one here is marked *Access denied*.¶

The panel on the left is headed Explorer and holds, from the top:

Access mode: A badge showing how you are connected — for example Static · shared access — with a Switch cloud link beside it for returning to the provider chooser.
The account: The cloud account you are browsing, such as Quantabricks-payor-01.
Buckets: Every bucket the account can see, each with its region underneath (us-east-1, ap-southeast-2, and so on). A bucket you have no permission to read shows Access denied in place of its region.

Click a bucket to open it. The arrow at the top of the panel collapses it and gives the object table more room.

15.3. Browsing a bucket¶

A bucket open in QuantaGrid, showing folders in a table with Name, Size, Class and Modified columns. — Inside a bucket. Folders sort first, then objects with their size, storage class and modified date.¶

The breadcrumb starts at Buckets and then names the bucket and each folder you have opened; click any part of it to go back up. The table has four columns:

Name: The object or folder. Click a folder to go into it. Name and Class can be sorted by clicking the column heading.
Size: The object size. Folders show a dash.
Class: The storage class the object is stored in.
Modified: When it last changed.

The tick box at the left of each row selects it, and the box in the heading selects everything on the page. At the foot of the table, Rows per page sets how many objects are listed at once and the arrows move between pages.

Above the table on the right are, in order: a refresh button, a new folder button, the Upload button, and a ⋮ button holding the rest of the actions.

15.4. What you can do with objects¶

Tick an object and an action bar appears above the table, showing how many are selected and offering Download, Copy, Move, Change class, Rename and Delete. The ✕ at its right clears the selection.

An object selected in QuantaGrid, with the action bar above the table and the Properties tab open below. — `photo.jpg` selected. The action bar sits above the table; the detail panel below it opens on **Properties**.¶

The ⋮ button at the top right holds the fuller list, whether or not anything is selected:

Preview: Opens the object to look at without downloading it.
Download: Fetches the selected objects to your computer.
Upload: Sends files into the folder you are currently viewing — the same as the Upload button.
Copy: Copies the selected objects to another location.
Move: Moves them to another location.
Storage Class: Changes the storage class the objects are stored in. Check retrieval costs before moving anything to an archive class.
Delete: Removes the selected objects. On a bucket with versioning switched on this leaves a delete marker rather than erasing history.
Recover: Undoes a delete on a versioned bucket by removing the delete marker.
Initiate Restore: Starts bringing archived objects (Glacier and similar) back to a readable state. This is not instant — the wait depends on the retrieval option.

15.5. The detail tabs¶

With an object selected, the panel along the bottom of the window carries eight tabs. Properties opens first, showing values such as the storage class, content type and version id. A tab that does not apply to what you have selected is greyed out. The chevron at the right of the tab strip collapses and expands the panel.

Properties: Size, type, dates and the object’s address.
Tags: Key-and-value tags, used for cost allocation and lifecycle rules.
Headers: The HTTP headers stored with the object.
Permissions: Who and what can reach it — the access control list.
Storage: The storage class, encryption setting and related storage details.
Management: Bucket-level rules: lifecycle, replication and inventory.
Metadata: System and custom metadata.
Versions: Previous versions and delete markers, on buckets where versioning is on.

If a bucket will not open

Access denied beside a bucket means your cloud account has no permission to read it. That is a permission in AWS or Azure, not a QuantaCloud setting — ask whoever administers that cloud account. If listing stops working across the board, your temporary storage credentials have probably expired; use Switch cloud and sign in to the provider again.