Jan
Amazon storage solutions have been a hotly debated issue recently at the Octabox water-coolers. My partner Adam believes that S3 is the best thing since sliced bread and I think its a lot hype but of no real value. The truth is probably somewhere in between.
Lets give Amazon’s service a head-to-head comparison with our hosting providers, ServInt:
Amazon:
- Provides storage
- Provides bandwidth
- Charges per request (Is this a new model? never heard of that)
- Sells books
ServInt:
- Provides storage
- Provides bandwidth
- Provides application and database servers
- Is a managed solution
I’ll focus on the storage and bandwidth, and consider the rest added value, starting by building several possible real-world scenarios
1. Small art gallery:
We’ll start with a small but not obscure art gallery. It stores about 12Gb of images and videos and transfer is about 200Gb.
At ServInt, the only choice is the essentials package (a bit of an overkill, but the cheapest solution ServInt has to offer). Monthly charge is fixed at 50$, barring any unforeseen sudden increase in bandwidth or storage. ServInt actually allows accounts to go over the limits, and charges for the difference (0.25$ per 1Gb bandwidth, 3$ per 1Gb storage).
At Amazon, the calculation is relatively simple:
(12 Gb storage x 0.15$) + (200 Gb traffic download x 0.18$)
+ (25 Gb traffic upload x 0.10$) + (800,000 GET requests x 0.01$ per 1000)
+ (100,000 PUT requests x 0.01$ per 1000) = 49$ and change.
The amazon charge is composed of ~80% bandwidth and ~19% requests.
* Get requests were derived from dividing the download traffic by the average high-resolution image size of 250Kb. PUT requests are based on upload traffic divided by the same image size.
Round One: Draw
2. The upstart video sharing community:
Those have been popping like flies recently. Supposing its marginally successful, storage is about 30Gb and transfer is about 800Gb. This time we’ll be taking the VSPro Deuce account at ServInt, which is fixed at 150$ per. The calculation for Amazon is the same as before, and it comes to 160$ and change.
The amazon charge is composed of ~95% bandwidth and ~2% requests.
* This time Get requests were based on the traffic divided by the average web-encoded movie size - about 3Mb.
Round Two: Advantage, ServInt
3. The up and coming social network:
XYZ Social network has been doing recently well, and has some plenty of users uploading and sharing photos and so forth, marking its current needs at 220Gb storage and 3,000Gb bandwidth. It requires a dedicated server, such as the simplest enterprise solution by ServInt, which cloaks at 500$ per. Again, calculating for Amazon we come to 1,021$ and change.
The amazon charge is composed of ~57% bandwidth and ~40% requests.
* This time Amazon exploded since I’ve put average user uploaded image size at 80kb (including thumbnails), increasing requests by a large factor over previous cases.
Round Three: ServInt by TKO
Excel style -
So what does this all mean?
First of all, it’s interesting to note that most of Amazon’s costs are bandwidth related. The other significant cost factor is the amount of requests - which becomes most pronounced for low size files, high transfer sites. In fact, storage costs on average comprised only 3.2% of the total costs!
Those figures support my view that Amazon is an expensive alternative to standard web hosting. Lets not forget, that the hosting packages mentioned actually include a hosting server, providing the backend to run the site. The only path in which Amazon seems like a viable alternative, considering their reputation for speed and reliability might be the heavier media types, such as video and audio streams.
There are some who would obviously dispute my conclusions, such as SmugBlog (marketing ploy?) and actual small blogs (not to mention my partner in crime, Adam)
