Amazon S3 is a cloud storage service that allows developers to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web. It provides scalable, reliable storage with interfaces for object storage and retrieval, and can be used with frameworks like Ruby on Rails through plugins and gems that integrate with S3. S3 offers inexpensive storage and data transfer rates starting at $0.15 per GB for storage and $0.10 per GB for data transfer.

1. AmazonS3
mstannard@gmail.com

2. What is it?
S3 = Simple Storage System
quot;Amazon S3 is storage for the Internet. It
is designed to make web-scale computing
easier for developers.quot;

3. Features
Write, read, delete from 1B to 5GB
REST and SOAP interfaces
HTTP & BitTorrent protocols supported
Authentication built-in
US & European storage

4. Why use it?
CDN
Fast
Scalable
Simple
Inexpensive
Reliable 99.99%

5. Basic Concepts
Object - data + metadata (custom + some standard)
Bucket - the storage container (max 100 / dev)
- must be unique across whole S3 service
Key - unique identifier of an object in
a bucket

6. Using S3 with Rails
Signup at Amazon
Install AWS::S3 gem
Install attachment_fu plugin

7. config/amazons3.yml
development:
bucket_name: reading_eggs_development
access_key_id: my_access_key
secret_access_key: my_secret_key
test:
bucket_name: reading_eggs_test
access_key_id: my_access_key
secret_access_key: my_secret_key
prod:
etc.....

8. attachment_fu
before:
has_attachment :content_type => 'application/x-shockwave-flash',
:storage => :file_system,
:path_prefix => 'path/to/files/',
:max_size => 10.megabytes

9. attachment_fu
after:
has_attachment :content_type => 'application/x-shockwave-flash',
:storage => :s3,
:max_size => 10.megabytes

10. attachment_fu
access:
>> p = PartFile.find(:first)
=> #<PartFile:0x23a0eb0
@attributes={quot;content_typequot;=>quot;application/x-shockwave-flashquot;,
quot;sizequot;=>quot;4434939quot;, quot;idquot;=>quot;315quot;, quot;filenamequot;=>quot;I_and_a.swfquot;}
>> p.public_filename
=> quot;http://s3.amazonaws.com/reading_eggs_dev/part_files/315/
I_and_a.swfquot;
>> p.full_filename
=> quot;part_files/315/I_and_a.swfquot;
>> p.bucket_name
=> quot;reading_eggs_devquot;

11. Pricing
Storage
$0.15 per GB-Month of storage used
Data Transfer
$0.10 per GB - all data transfer in
$0.18 per GB - first 10 TB / month data transfer out
$0.16 per GB - next 40 TB / month data transfer out
$0.13 per GB - data transfer out / month over 50 TB
Requests
$0.01 per 1,000 PUT or LIST requests
$0.01 per 10,000 GET and all other requests*
* No charge for delete requests

12. Sample Costings
Data Storage Costs
1GB/M $0.15
1 GB Storage = $0.15
Bandwidth Costs
5000 Users
200 MB / User / Month
0.2 GB * 5000 = 1000GB * $0.18 = $180
Request Costs
Request = 200/User/Month = 5000 * 200 = 1M get requests
1000000/10000 = 100 * $0.01 = $1
Total Cost
US$181.15

13. Resources
Amazon S3 : http://aws.amazon.com/s3
AWS::S3 gem : http://amazon.rubyforge.org/
s3fox : http://www.rjonna.com/ext/s3fox.php
s3 calc : http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com