Amazon.com has evolved beyond the online store that most people know it as. It also offers a suite of internet services for businesses and individuals that make development easier and cheaper. One of their most popular services, S3 (Simple Storage Service), is also a great benefit to individuals.
Simple Storage Service
As one of the largest online companies, Amazon knows how to build databases and services that are fast, efficient, and can scale to enormous traffic levels. They’ve taken this experience and opened it to the world as the Simple Storage System.
If your company uses a database for it’s web site, you can also plug into the S3 service for data storage. Amazon’s modest fee structure is based on the amount of data stored and transferred every month. For the average user, the costs are extremely low. Some sites have seen their expenses drop 60-70% by offloading server costs and maintenance.
S3 vs. External Hard Drives
As a photographer, I have been looking into redundant storage systems for my digital files. I have an extra internal hard drive on my computer as the master set. I also have an external hard drive as a backup. The external hard drive enclosure cost approximately $50 and a 300G hard drive costs approximately $150. This setup allows me to carry the files safely and efficiently. The files can also be used on any computer with a USB port.
How does Amazon’s S3 compare?
I have been uploading my files to Amazon as I prepare to move to Europe. I wanted access to my files from anywhere at anytime. Amazon’s fee structure is a bit confusing and I’m still not sure what the exact cost is going to be (S3 prices are schedule to drop in June 2007). I am estimating the cost of storage plus upload/download transfers to be around $1 to $2 a month. For this modest amount, I will have secure access to my private files, redundant storage for better security, and won’t have to pay the electricity to run an external hard drive. As you can see, the savings are substantial over an external hard drive.
S3 Fees (effective June 1, 2007
- Storage
- $0.15 per GB-Month of storage used
- Data Transfer
- $0.10 per GB - all data uploaded
- $0.18 per GB - first 10 TB / month data downloaded
- $0.16 per GB - next 40 TB / month data downloaded
- $0.13 per GB - data downloaded / month over 50 TB
S3 Disadvantages
This service is very easy to use for those with fast internet connections, such as a T-1 line in a corporate office. The average household’s cable or DSL connection does not have fast upload acces. The process will be painfully slow for large image, music, or video files. However, this won’t be a problem for those storing data and text-based documents.
Jungle Disk
While S3 is merely an online database with a powerful API, you can easily access this service with third party software. Jungle Disk is a small application that creates a virtual drive to S3 on your computer. This is the best way for the average person to use the S3 service. It gives you simple drag and drop convenience as well as the same functionality of an external hard drive or USB flash drive. It is a free open-source program that works with Windows, Mac, and Linux.