Fraser Speirs (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} fraserspeirs) wrote,@ 2006-10-18 21:33:00 |
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Farewell S3, hello Bingo.
I've been pretty frustrated with Amazon S3 recently. It is either not ready for (or not designed for, depending on your perspective) consumer-grade data storage. Bear in mind that when I say "consumer grade", I'm talking about consumers of technical abilities like my own - not the grandmothers of this world.
It seems that, if you want to make S3 work for you, you had better be ready to work with half-finished wrappers around curl or experimental Ruby modules. As for a service that is functional and just works out of the box, S3 is not it. That's not really a criticism of S3 per se - it's just that the ecosystem of tools is pretty sparse right now.
Specifically, I had a problem - I believe it was with Interarchy's S3 support - that resulted in all my data being wiped out from S3. If Interarchy isn't ready for production use with S3, the only fallback option is S3 Browser. S3 Browser is a fine little application, but it doesn't have the batch features that I needed and it didn't set the MIME type correctly for AAC files. So, really, there are no solid tools on Mac OS X for working with S3.
In previous writing on this topic, I said that Joyent's Bingo service "[has] some significant value propositions over S3. In particular, the fact that you can connect over a standard protocol (WebDAV) is very attractive, compared to S3's custom HTTP-based protocol.". With WebDAV support I can use Transmit which is one of the most reliable apps I have on my machine.
Also, since I posted that S3/Bingo comparison, Joyent introduced 25GB and 50GB account levels at $49/year and $99/year respectively. I signed up for a 25GB account and I think the time savings in working with Bingo will pay for itself in an evening or two.
I've been pretty frustrated with Amazon S3 recently. It is either not ready for (or not designed for, depending on your perspective) consumer-grade data storage. Bear in mind that when I say "consumer grade", I'm talking about consumers of technical abilities like my own - not the grandmothers of this world.
It seems that, if you want to make S3 work for you, you had better be ready to work with half-finished wrappers around curl or experimental Ruby modules. As for a service that is functional and just works out of the box, S3 is not it. That's not really a criticism of S3 per se - it's just that the ecosystem of tools is pretty sparse right now.
Specifically, I had a problem - I believe it was with Interarchy's S3 support - that resulted in all my data being wiped out from S3. If Interarchy isn't ready for production use with S3, the only fallback option is S3 Browser. S3 Browser is a fine little application, but it doesn't have the batch features that I needed and it didn't set the MIME type correctly for AAC files. So, really, there are no solid tools on Mac OS X for working with S3.
In previous writing on this topic, I said that Joyent's Bingo service "[has] some significant value propositions over S3. In particular, the fact that you can connect over a standard protocol (WebDAV) is very attractive, compared to S3's custom HTTP-based protocol.". With WebDAV support I can use Transmit which is one of the most reliable apps I have on my machine.
Also, since I posted that S3/Bingo comparison, Joyent introduced 25GB and 50GB account levels at $49/year and $99/year respectively. I signed up for a 25GB account and I think the time savings in working with Bingo will pay for itself in an evening or two.
