We're Switching To Amazon S3

I've been having so much fun using Amazon S3, that I've decided to use it to host all static objects for our clients. It helps to deliver a higher performing website, it's easy to use, and makes easy work of keeping your website contents backed up.

Amazon recently announced a new web service called CloudFront, here's what they have to say about it:

Amazon CloudFront is a web service for content delivery. It integrates with other Amazon Web Services to give developers and businesses an easy way to distribute content to end users with low latency, high data transfer speeds, and no commitments.

Amazon CloudFront delivers your content using a global network of edge locations. Requests for your objects are automatically routed to the nearest edge location, so content is delivered with the best possible performance. Amazon CloudFront works seamlessly with Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) which durably stores the original, definitive versions of your files. Like other Amazon Web Services, there are no contracts or monthly commitments for using Amazon CloudFront – you pay only for as much or as little content as you actually deliver through the service.

I think making these services available to small businesses is going to level out the playing field when it comes to delivering content using the kind of bandwidth necessary for a pleasurable site interaction. Fast load times have been a hallmark of larger websites that have been using traditional content delivery network services such as Akamai. It will interesting to see the new face of cdn's in the next five years. We might seen a significant amount of consolidation, and value added resellers similar to the existing Amazon Associates program.

My Experience With Amazon S3

Well, after waiting a significant amount of time since the release of Amazon S3, I decided to dip my toe in the waters and see what it feels like. I'm happy to say that my expectations have been met. By using Amaozn S3, I was able to improve the performance of my existing infrastructure, and the visitor experience.

As a web developer and general internet guru, I spend time reading things about website performance, and other crazy notions of a better user experience. By using Amazon's S3 for all of my static content, I reduce the amount of requests Apache needs to serve on our own servers. Instead of wasting the more valuable system resources of my web server to serve images, javascript files, flash and other static content, this can now be offered to my website visitors on a world-class content delivery network, Amazon S3.

The speed improvement on the website I tested (WeKnowPhoto) was immediately noticable. Offsetting the regular Apache web requests by serving images and other static content on S3 means more capacity on my existing data center servers. Essentially more bang and less bucks to provide a much faster loading website. Speed is such a critical component to the enjoyment of a web visit. Everyone hates a slow loading website. If you're anything like me, then you can remember the days of dial up modems, and the excruitiating pain that was requesting a web page.

I'm considering moving the entire E4E platform to S3. This way, clients can enjoy the benefits of having their content on a cdn. Might be an additional option for some clients, or just a value added service, haven't come to a conclusion on that yet.