Adult sites and Amazon S3 / EC2

[david123]

Anybody has any experience with hosting an adult paysite on Amazon's S3 and using EC2? What are you thoughts on this new 'unlimited' storage and cheap processing power?

[Rofl]

Hey, ya know what?

I read their terms and conditions, and IT DOES look like adult is OK, as long as it is legal adult.

Anyone shed some more light on this?

This is very interesting indeed, very interesting time for me too ... hmmm scratches chin...

[david123]

a little math
JavaScript-based Amazon Web Services Simple Monthly Calculator

from the looks of things, it is not cheap. BUT it is reliable. so if your concern is geo distribution, maximum availability, fast sites, unlimited storage, then it could be the way to go.

[josico]

I'm not sure if I'm reading this wrong or not, but it seems like S3 is for storage so that files can be accessed anywhere and EC2 is for computing power, to make the transactions of files etc faster. I can't seem to see anywhere about hosting websites etc. Aside from Amazon AWS, but that only allows sites that drive traffic back to Amazon.

Referenced from:
Amazon.com: Browse Amazon Web Services

EDIT: I guess what I wanted to say was that it is more like an external hard drive that's on the internet.

[Rofl]

Amazon S3 provides a simple web services interface that you can use to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web. Using this web service, developers can easily build applications that make use of Internet storage. Since Amazon S3 is highly scalable and you only pay for what you use, developers can start small and grow their application as they wish, with no compromise on performance or reliability. It is designed to be highly flexible: Store any type and amount of data that you want; read the same piece of data a million times or only for emergency disaster recovery; build a simple FTP application, or a sophisticated web application such as the Amazon.com retail web site. Amazon S3 frees developers to focus on innovation, not figuring out how to store their data.

From Here: Amazon.com: Amazon S3 FAQs: Amazon Web Services

[josico]

So from that I still read that it can only store and retrieve data. So even for the 'sophisticated web application', I'm guessing that it means that stuff like the DB, images etc are stored there and accessed through another web server. IE, you can't install apache etc on there. It is like I said above, more like a external hard drive, a container for you to expand your business.

For example, EC2 would allow for quicker access to the DB stored on S3 due to greater computing power, without needing to upgrade to a top of the line server, it scales computing power to what you need. And S3 allows for 'unlimited' space for applications like webmail etc.

[Rofl]

Oh yes, sorry man, I see what you mean.

Yes, I see it as a backend for an actual site you have got hosted elsewhere.

[david123]

josico is correct. generally, they provide reliability. by hosting the content on S3 and using EC2 for the computing (data retrieval, etc.), you are basically covered and guaranteed 99.99% uptime. I mean real 99.99%, not what you actually experience at hosting companies who state the same.

EC2 can run linux instances and be used for the data retrieval, but I can only see really being used by sites that either want to pay more for reliability, or sites that have millions of hits a day from all over the world.

But for example, if you got a site that has a ton of HD videos, and download speeds are annoying your clients, then using S3 could be a solution.

Anyways, I don't think Amazon is gonna replace regular hosting just yet, but it's headed that way. Please note, that Google has launched something similar, but nothing like Amazon yet..... 'yet' is the keyword. (we know Google will eventually make something even better).

[thebes]

I'd looked at a while back for a project, but it seems it can only do storage and you need to use a special api for it. I could see it being good, maybe, to serve a large program's videos from...

[fsudirectory]

Many new start-ups use these services to enable them to have reliable hosting and easy scaling if/when their companies expand.

[Boddog]

amazon allow free web service

wow that is super interesting

I will take a look tx

[josico]

Originally Posted by Boddog

amazon allow free web service

wow that is super interesting

I will take a look tx

Yeah, but from what I understand the free web service is only to be used to promote their sites and / or products. Not for your own use.

And a comment about the 'real' 99.99% reliability. Most of the traffic will still need to be funnelled through your own host, so realistically, and correct me if I'm wrong, but any point in time where your host is down, the clients won't be able to access the data anyways. So you are back to square one. That is unless the api allows your clients to access the data directly with out your host? I doubt that you'd be able to do that though.

[david123]

Originally Posted by josico

Yeah, but from what I understand the free web service is only to be used to promote their sites and / or products. Not for your own use.

And a comment about the 'real' 99.99% reliability. Most of the traffic will still need to be funnelled through your own host, so realistically, and correct me if I'm wrong, but any point in time where your host is down, the clients won't be able to access the data anyways. So you are back to square one. That is unless the api allows your clients to access the data directly with out your host? I doubt that you'd be able to do that though.

I am pretty sure that this is where EC2 comes in. It is basically the linux end of your site. So you start an EC2 instance, install linux, put up your site on S3 and pull the html files from there. So you won't any other hosting for anything. Right now, this is all a matter of finding people who have experience in setting these things up. In a few months mass migration could begin, and people drop their old hosting and move to amazon (they just lowered their prices).
here are some current tools for amazon:
Manage Your Membership · InfiniteBits :: Web and FTP access to Amazon S3 :: Online Data Backup :: FTP Server for Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) :: Amazon Web Services :: Transfer Files to S3 :: S3 Backup
Amazon S3 Tools | elastic8

[thebes]

Well, EC2 sounds a lot more interesting and useful than just S3. I presume you've got root and absolute control over your virtual box?. If adult is allowed then you could get a dedicated box for as low as 72 bucks a month (plus 100 for a terrabyte, say, but you only pay for what you use). I wonder how difficult their image tool is to use, and how it works with things like IP addresses. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.