Thread

Hi,

I currently host EE @ Enginehost. EH is great *except* that I have many large videos (streaming, downloadable) and it’s way too expensive as my transmittal increases. I was able to setup an Amazon S3 account and the price can’t be beat. So, far, I see two issues:

1. S3 doesn’t really have a file structure; it has buckets that contain objects. So, far as i can tell, the S3 setup is akin to several top-level folders each with many files but no subdirectors. So, you have to configure a flat one-level “folder structure”

2. Here’s my real problem: it works fine if you give the S3 public access. But that means anybody can view your assets. From EH I can definitely do a subdomain redirect (to make the Amazon files appear to be on my host), but it’s unclear how to make them private

...just wondered if anybody has done this with S3

Thanks,
David Harper
www.bionicturtle.com

In my understanding if you want the files to be served over the web they have to be public. The forums are pretty active on Amazon developer so you might want to post there.

Amazon has a great API.  You can do whatever you might imagine you would need to do with storage (including giving access to your private files) but you probably have to do a bit of coding to get there.

Amazon is actually quite expensive with bandwidth.  The real cost advantage with S3 is the storage savings.  S3 bandwidth is expensive, but running and maintaining your own file servers is much more expensive. For example, Basecamp stores customer files on S3 but you don’t actually touch S3 when you download.  Instead, the Basecamp servers retrieve the files and then you download from Basecamp.  They aren’t saving money on bandwidth.

Other examples are discussed here (SmugMug) and here (Wordpress.)  Again, everyone is talking about saving with storage costs rather than bandwidth costs. 

Here is a breakdown between what you are using now, S3 and a few VPS providers.

EH     = 80.0 cents/GB
S3     = 20.0 cents/GB (cheaper after 10 TB)
Slicehost = 17.5 cents/GB
Joyent   = 10 TB with every plan

So really, it is Joyent that can’t be beat.  I don’t know what those guys are up to.  They have been giving away free VPS accounts to Facebook and OpenSocial developers.  They have had some bumps (their Strongspace storage service recently had 8 days of downtime due to a ZFS bug) but their VPS accounts are solid from my experience.

David, I think your real problem is actually…

3.) How can I integrate my authenticated file download system (I assume you use something like Download Lock) with something running on an external server?

Honestly, I am not sure how to get this done in a pinch without breaking out the developer tools.  Probably someone smarter than I am has a clever solution.  Your best solution might simply be to get a new shell for your Bionic Turtle.  ;)