Data, processed in ClickHouse, is usually stored in the local file system — on the same machine with the ClickHouse server. That requires large-capacity disks, which can be expensive enough. To avoid that you can store the data remotely — on [Amazon S3](https://aws.amazon.com/s3/) disks or in the Hadoop Distributed File System ([HDFS](https://hadoop.apache.org/docs/current/hadoop-project-dist/hadoop-hdfs/HdfsDesign.html)).
To work with data stored on `Amazon S3` disks use [S3](../engines/table-engines/integrations/s3.md) table engine, and to work with data in the Hadoop Distributed File System — [HDFS](../engines/table-engines/integrations/hdfs.md) table engine.
[MergeTree](../engines/table-engines/mergetree-family/mergetree.md) and [Log](../engines/table-engines/log-family/log.md) family table engines can store data to HDFS using a disk with type `HDFS`.
You can encrypt the data stored on [S3](../engines/table-engines/mergetree-family/mergetree.md#table_engine-mergetree-s3), or [HDFS](#configuring-hdfs) external disks, or on a local disk. To turn on the encryption mode, in the configuration file you must define a disk with the type `encrypted` and choose a disk on which the data will be saved. An `encrypted` disk ciphers all written files on the fly, and when you read files from an `encrypted` disk it deciphers them automatically. So you can work with an `encrypted` disk like with a normal one.
For example, when ClickHouse writes data from some table to a file `store/all_1_1_0/data.bin` to `disk1`, then in fact this file will be written to the physical disk along the path `/path1/store/all_1_1_0/data.bin`.
When writing the same file to `disk2`, it will actually be written to the physical disk at the path `/path1/path2/store/all_1_1_0/data.bin` in encrypted mode.
-`key` — The key for encryption and decryption. Type: [Uint64](../sql-reference/data-types/int-uint.md). You can use `key_hex` parameter to encrypt in hexadecimal form.
-`current_key_id` — The key used for encryption. All the specified keys can be used for decryption, and you can always switch to another key while maintaining access to previously encrypted data.
There is a tool `clickhouse-static-files-uploader`, which prepares a data directory for a given table (`SELECT data_paths FROM system.tables WHERE name = 'table_name'`). For each table you need, you get a directory of files. These files can be uploaded to, for example, a web server with static files. After this preparation, you can load this table into any ClickHouse server via `DiskWeb`.
This is a read-only disk. Its data is only read and never modified. A new table is loaded to this disk via `ATTACH TABLE` query (see example below). Local disk is not actually used, each `SELECT` query will result in a `http` request to fetch required data. All modification of the table data will result in an exception, i.e. the following types of queries are not allowed: [CREATE TABLE](../sql-reference/statements/create/table.md), [ALTER TABLE](../sql-reference/statements/alter/index.md), [RENAME TABLE](../sql-reference/statements/rename.md#misc_operations-rename_table), [DETACH TABLE](../sql-reference/statements/detach.md) and [TRUNCATE TABLE](../sql-reference/statements/truncate.md).
Web server storage is supported only for the [MergeTree](../engines/table-engines/mergetree-family/mergetree.md) and [Log](../engines/table-engines/log-family/log.md) engine families. To access the data stored on a `web` disk, use the [storage_policy](../engines/table-engines/mergetree-family/mergetree.md#terms) setting when executing the query. For example, `ATTACH TABLE table_web UUID '{}' (id Int32) ENGINE = MergeTree() ORDER BY id SETTINGS storage_policy = 'web'`.
If a query fails with an exception `DB:Exception Unreachable URL`, then you can try to adjust the settings: [http_connection_timeout](../operations/settings/settings.md#http_connection_timeout), [http_receive_timeout](../operations/settings/settings.md#http_receive_timeout), [keep_alive_timeout](../operations/server-configuration-parameters/settings.md#keep-alive-timeout).
`clickhouse static-files-disk-uploader --metadata-path <path> --output-dir <dir>` (`--metadata-path` can be found in query `SELECT data_paths FROM system.tables WHERE name = 'table_name'`).
If URL is not reachable on disk load when the server is starting up tables, then all errors are caught. If in this case there were errors, tables can be reloaded (become visible) via `DETACH TABLE table_name` -> `ATTACH TABLE table_name`. If metadata was successfully loaded at server startup, then tables are available straight away.
Use [http_max_single_read_retries](../operations/settings/settings.md#http-max-single-read-retries) setting to limit the maximum number of retries during a single HTTP read.
## Zero-copy Replication (not ready for production) {#zero-copy}
ClickHouse supports zero-copy replication for `S3` and `HDFS` disks, which means that if the data is stored remotely on several machines and needs to be synchronized, then only the metadata is replicated (paths to the data parts), but not the data itself.
