S3 for backups and web media storage
Overall Satisfaction with Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
S3 is used by us for offsite backup storage and also hosts some media files for a web application. S3 is very cheap storage and solves the issue of storage, it has a great API which has made automating offsite backups easy, it also has granular access control over files which has assisted in providing a backup service for my customers.
- The storage is fast
- There are flexible storage options for even cheaper long term storage
- "Client" access accounts can be created that look nice to give clients access to their own storage which is stored on my account.
- The Amazon CLI API makes automating reliable backups possible on Windows Servers. Other consumer based services such as dropbox won't run as a "service" and need the user logged in so isn't appropriate for a database server.
- Amazon has it's own JSON format for granular account control and is difficult to implement. There have been improvements to moving that towards a GUI based control system but not all of the features are there yet.
- The main ROI benefit of S3 is reduction in storage costs, and an improved backup system for our clients.