3

Which one is better?

I need to store a lot of static files ... and I wonder which one is better, cheaper and faster.

Andrew Gaul
  • 262
  • 1
  • 7
naiad
  • 201
  • 2
  • 7

1 Answers1

4

It may be helpful if you can give a bit more info about your environment.

EBS will probably be faster to a point. They are essentially attached storage. S3 is meant to store a lot of static files and has good download throughput. However, S3 is "eventually consistent" which means that your data may not immediately appear, so if you are writing a large number of static files to be read somewhere else soon after, S3 may not be the best option.

Common use cases for S3 include static content storage like website images, downloadable files etc.

For EBS over NFS it should behave as any remote drive, but be prepared for any trouble if you are reading the NFS mount over a large network gap (such as outside of AWS to inside of it), then S3 may be preferable.

EBS costs $.10 per GB-month (so $1 per 10GB each month) - EBS Snapshots (basically a backup copy) are stored in S3 and charged at the S3 storage rate.

S3 costs $.15 per GB-month

Also, don't forget about I/O and data transfer costs for each service, as these vary based on if they are internal or external.

Flashman
  • 1,321
  • 10
  • 9
  • 1
    Hi, thank you very much for your comments ... It's to store uploaded photos, but I guess I can code something to transfer from temporary EBS storage (faster) to S3, and leave them forever there, and call them directly to S3 when I know they have been uploaded there, so then "delete" from EBS ... that make sense ? – naiad Jan 20 '11 at 16:51
  • I haven't worked with S3 storage for something like that, but that sound's fairly solid, if a little tricky to ensure reliability from your application. – Flashman Jan 20 '11 at 19:20
  • Anyway, I don't have that network gap you told about ... NFS is mounted inside AWS, in other server, that handles all the EBS and serves them to other instances through NFS. I think I will keep in EBS since is cheaper transfer. – naiad Jan 20 '11 at 20:49