Storage Providers

ALTCHA Sentinel supports remote and local storage providers for handling file uploads in forms and storing database snapshots.

Supported Providers

The following storage providers are currently supported:

• AWS S3
• Azure Blob Storage
• Local File System

AWS S3

To use AWS S3 or any S3-compatible service (e.g., MinIO, Cloudflare R2), set the following environment variables:

• STORAGE_PROVIDER=s3
• STORAGE_S3_BUCKET
• STORAGE_S3_ACCESS_KEY_ID
• STORAGE_S3_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
• STORAGE_S3_REGION
• STORAGE_S3_ENDPOINT (optional; use for custom endpoints or S3-compatible services)

Azure Blob Storage

To use Azure Blob Storage, set the following environment variables:

• STORAGE_PROVIDER=azure
• STORAGE_AZURE_CONTAINER
• STORAGE_AZURE_CONNECTION_STRING

Local File System

By default, Sentinel uses the local file system for storage. Files are stored in the data directory.

• STORAGE_PROVIDER=local (default)
• STORAGE_LOCAL_DIR (defaults to {DATA_DIR}/storage)

Snapshots

Database snapshots can use a different storage provider than the one used for file uploads. To configure this, use the same environment variables as above, prefixed with SNAPSHOTS_. For example:

• SNAPSHOTS_STORAGE_PROVIDER
• SNAPSHOTS_STORAGE_S3_BUCKET
• SNAPSHOTS_STORAGE_S3_ACCESS_KEY_ID
• SNAPSHOTS_STORAGE_S3_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
• SNAPSHOTS_STORAGE_AZURE_CONTAINER
• SNAPSHOTS_STORAGE_LOCAL_DIR

This separation allows you to store snapshots independently of form uploads—ideal for backup and redundancy strategies.