Amazon S3
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- vaxorcist
Have any developers here worked with Amazon S3?
I like the pricing model, I like the PHP S3 API(from a previous project, everything worked as advertised) and I like the fact it's Amazon.
I have a couple of clients who may need S3.
One is warm to the idea, but feels somehow re-assured by the "unlimited" promise of his existing shared webhost.... I know, it's not the same at all, but has anyone found a smart way to convince a client that real bandwith for pennies is better than promised but unlikely "unlimited" service from a shared host? I've tried the rational approach and showed him the SmugMug case studies...
And anyone with S3 experience is welcomed to chime in on oddities, details, etc...
- vaxorcist0
....well, he sees the Amazon S3 pricing per gig like cell phone minutes, i.e. gotcha, and he thinks "unlimited" shared host for $10 / month will prevent gotchas.... even if the S3 price is very low, it's not fixed.... but hey, that's why they have the incentive to buy more hardware,etc....
I think I'll just roll S3 pricing into my fee next time I have a project like this and a client like this....
Only real Amazon S3 concern is if I get a DDOS attack or a script kid tries to make one of my sites into their own private rapidshare.....
- chow0
I've used S3 on several projects. It's great as long as your application is designed with it in mind.
If you care about performance, you'll also want to look into a caching CDN, such as CloudFront. S3 latency can be quite slow at times.
Clearly S3 more expensive than commodity shared hosting, but they're not really comparable at all. Say you're looking to lease a delivery vehicle, shared hosting is like an economy car with "unlimited" mileage; S3 like is having a fleet of trucks worldwide available to use as you need.
If you can't convince your client to switch, let him stay on shared hosting and see how he likes it when his account is locked due to "excessive CPU utilization" or whatever other excuse the shared host has put in the TOS to protect themselves from high bandwidth users.
HTH
- chow0
Glad to help.
If S3 isn't a good fit for your project, you might also consider switching to a premium host, like say (mt).