'Net Features : amazon s3

Riak CS Lets Users Replicate Data Globally

Michael Garrity — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 14:46:00 GMT

Customers can now replicate Riak Cloud Storage (Riak CS) data across multiple data centers to assure its users that they can avoid disruptions from outages and serve content faster to multiple geographic locations, all while building upon its existing compatibility with Amazon S3.

The cloud storage service from Basho Technologies will now allow customers to spread their stored data over a series of data centers located around the world, and the integration of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure guarantees high availability. Basically, Riak CS customers will now be able to replicate their stored data on any data center they want on their own terms, in addition all of the benefits of using AWS, just to sweeten the deal. This solution also reduces some of the risks commonly associated with AWS.

Moreoever, these new replication capabilities will break large data objects into smaller blocks that will be streamed to the underlying Riak cluster, where they will then be replicated for high availability. A manifest for each object will be maintained, allowing the service to retrieve each block from the cluster and present the full object to the end-user. Global information, bucket information and manifests will all be streamed in real-time from a primary implementation to a secondary site for multi-site replication, and objects can be replicated in either “full” or “real-time” sync modes.

Riak CS, built upon Riak, the open source distributed NoSQL database, was just released by Basho last year, and the Amazon S3 integration, which provides Riak CS customers with access to S3 tools and frameworks, was only announced early in 2012.

Analytics for the AWS Cloud

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 02:30:00 GMT

Newvem, a service/platform which analyzes Amazon Web Services usage, has released a new tools in its KnowYourCloud Analytics web application that aims to help enterprises make better use of the cloud.

The new Reserved Instances Decision Tool helps customers of Amazon Web Services choose which On-Demand Instances should be moved to Reserved Instances - based on flexibility, availability, and cost considerations - by providing insights into cloud usage patterns. The Newvem platform analyzes past usage to determine the baseline level of usage they will need in the future, types of instances they will need to meet business requirements and the best geographic locations of those instances.

Amazon has been promoting Reserved Instances for some time over its On-Demand instances (the pay-as-you-go model). Reserved Instances however offer even more significant cost savings and assured capacity but do require long term commitments to Amazon (and some complex decision making by IT). Enter Newvem.

"Newvem's KnowYourCloud Analytics is like Google Analytics for cloud computing," said Zev Laderman, Newvem's co-founder and CEO. "It scans AWS usage patterns and lets AWS users know if they can benefit from Reserved Instances, indicates which parts of their cloud would benefit the most, and offers recommendations on how to execute the move."

Just How Big is Amazon S3? Really Big (and Growing)

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 16:30:00 GMT

The size of the cloud just keeps growing – at least it does for Amazon.

The company announced late last week that at the end of the first quarter of 2012, there were 905 billion objects in Amazon S3 and that it routinely handles 650,000 requests per second for those objects – with occasional peaks far above that number.

Amazon S3's cloud growth is by all accounts phenomenal. Back in the fourth quarter of 2006, there were just 2.9 billion objects stored. That number had increased to 40 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008 and 262 billion in the fourth quarter of 2010. Just one year later, the total number of objects stored in Amazon S3 had skyrocketed to 762 billion.

Amazon indicated that the S3 object count continues to grow at a rapid clip even after they added object expiration and multi-object deletion at the end of the year. Every day, well over a billion objects are added via the S3 APIs, AWS Import/Export, the AWS Storage Gateway, all sorts of backup tools, and through Direct Connect pipes.

Amazon S3 for WordPress: Cloud Hosting Solution for WP

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 19:51:00 GMT

Several weeks ago I received a frantic text message in the middle of the night from a friend whose website (a WordPress blog) I host on my Web server. Apparently, the site was receiving a surge of traffic. I immediately increased their bandwidth just in case they were to go over the limit previously established, but it made me think how this user could reduce costs and ease up the demands (storage and bandwidth) on my server. The answer was in the cloud.

There are quite a few cloud hosting providers on the market. Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is an online storage service that is perhaps the most well known. The Web service can be used to host static contents, like image files, instead of hosting them yourself. One of the biggest advantages of S3 is the reliability from Amazon servers during high traffic, and their bandwidth and storage prices are low compare to other similar services. Startup companies are embracing it for their online storage solution, and even bloggers are starting to use it to host their images and other static media.

The website had a WordPress installation which means, as in most things, there must be a plugin working with a cloud hosting provider like Amazon S3 wherein media content could be stored and served, right? Right!

Amazon S3 for WordPress is a plugin that allows bloggers to use Amazon's Simple Storage Service to host media for WordPress powered blogs. Once integrated into a WordPress install, WP users can upload files (images, video, audio, etc.) which are then saved into an Amazon S3 bucket without any extra steps. These files are delivered by Amazon S3 instead of your web host - problem solved.

Move to the Front of the Cloud

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 15:14:00 GMT

Amazon has unveiled a new web content delivery service named Amazon CloudFront.

The service could prove useful in improving the performance of a website by giving developers and businesses an easy way to distribute content to end users with low latency, high data transfer speeds, and no commitments - the same as the benefits of using a content delivery network (CDN).

Amazon CloudFront delivers content using a global network of edge locations. Requests for objects (files) are automatically routed to the nearest edge location, so content is delivered with the best possible performance. Using a content delivery network results in low latency and higher data transfer speeds overall, but only until recently has such an opportunity been available on such a scale.

CloudFront works with Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) to store the original, definitive versions of your files. Like other Amazon Web Services, there are no contracts or monthly commitments for using Amazon CloudFront. Users pay for as much or as little content as is actually delivered through the service.

Amazon has even made an Amazon CloudFront manager available. The application will come in handy for S3 users as they upload files to to the AS3 network and sitribute them through CloudFront. Pricing (seen below) seems reasonable.

Data Transfer
$0.170 per GB – first 10 TB / month data transfer out
$0.120 per GB – next 40 TB / month data transfer out
$0.100 per GB – next 100 TB / month data transfer out
$0.090 per GB – data transfer out / month over 150 TB

Requests
$0.010 per 10,000 GET requests

Amazon Slashes S3 Prices

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 20:28:00 GMT

Just a quick note: Amazon Web Services announced that effective November 1st, 2008, a new tiered pricing model for Amazon S3 will go into effect. The new model features four price tiers, with prices decreasing based on the amount of storage used by each customer. If you are familiar with pricing at S3 currently, you will be able to tell that Amazon is offering volume discounts for those that use more storage. While the price-cutting does not apply to data transfers, it's still going to help those using the service some some money.

Some additional information about S3:

- Currently there are over 29 billion objects stored in Amazon S3 vs. 22 billion at the end of Q2 2008.
- On Oct. 1, the service peaked at over 70,000 requests per second to store, retrieve, or delete an object.
- Over 400,000 developers have registered to use Amazon Web Service.