>> >> We are planning to use a cloud service to store large numbers of hi-res >> digital images for an online education platform. If any of you already use >> cloud services I'd be very grateful for recommendations or advice about what >> to look out for. >> >> Thank you, as always.
snip, snip, snip? Background: Along with running My Tours where we store images and audio clips on S3 I also work for Realestate.co.nz where we store ~1.4TB of images and serve around 80GB of images a day to consumers. This is currently stored on block storage at a local 'cloudy' provider. We are currently in the process of selecting a vendor for cloud file storage and at the moment Amazon s3 with a Fastly CDN is our preferred option. On 19/04/2013, at 12:00 AM, mcn-l-request at mcn.edu wrote: > > We use Rackspace. They have a new part to their cloud offer, which I've not > yet tried but which sounds helpful if you have large storage needs because it > lets you buy what you need without scaling up the server as a whole. Cloud > Blocks, I think it's called. Ah yes, here it is: > > http://www.rackspace.com/knowledge_center/article/cloud-block-storage-overview You have 2 basic types of cloud storage, object storage and block storage. Block storage is similar to your normal hard disks you would find in your computer or server. They 'look' just like a regular disk and perform the same. They tend to be faster than object storage and fit into traditional apps just like a normal disk would. Object storage is aimed at storing a large number of objects (images, audio, backups, and other assets). It is not a traditional file system in that you don't just copy files to a folder but use an API to put, requests and delete files. Both types of storage can scale but object based storage (Cloud Files from Rackspace and s3 from Amazon) is the right approach to storing large numbers of hi-res images. Another type of storage that may be also be of interest is Amazon's Glacier storage. For long term archival the price comes down to 1c/GB a month and is a great replacement for tape backups and long term storage that doesn't need to be accessed a lot. Amazon also hooks into a lot of other services such as the Amazon storage gateway - http://aws.amazon.com/storagegateway/). Worth looking at depending on your needs. And also don't forget a CDN - This helps deliver the assets out to the users as quickly as possible (s3 can be a little slow if you need fast access to the assets). Again Amazon makes it easy with CloudFront although in NZ we're looking at Fastly which has a local point of presence and has a really nice interface. > > We're using S3 for our collections images with a security policy to reserve > the full-size versions. It wasn't a very researched decision except that we > were already using AWS and like it. I'd be curious to hear from anyone who > did more research and went another direction...? > > Nate I came out with Amazon as the top contender. Rackspace Cloud Files is a close second but I'm not sure they do signed requests for access to certain files. > > We use Azure for one project with a few thousand images. We took a close look > at the charges for additions to the store as well as traffic charges - > hosting the data is just one part of the cost. It worked for us, and has been > reliable, but you need to do your sums. > Azure - Good point. We didn't look at Azure purely because most of our services are in a Linux environment. If you are Windows then this might be a good option. (Blob Storage - http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/home/features/data-management/) Feel free to ping me off list if you want to go into anything further - Happy to chat - glen at mytoursapp.com.
