How to: Compete with Amazon S3 without Buying Hardware

Re:How to: Compete with Amazon S3 without Buying Hardware by thereallurch on Friday April 27, 2012 @04:35PM (#3900922)

Wouldn't the next issue become bandwidth? Sure, you have cheap storage, but you still need to manipulate the data somehow. I know S3 only charges for outbound data. What about the other companies? Is bandwidth free and plenty?

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Re:How to: Compete with Amazon S3 without Buying Hardware by adamsmith on Friday April 27, 2012 @04:41PM (#3900950)

This is a really interesting question.

At scale, this could be managed, I think, through a combination of (a) shipping hard drives around, (b) caching, and (c) peering between storage providers. For example, shipping hard drives around would be expedient if you wanted to switch out a raw storage provider. The optimal strategy also depends on the access patterns and latency requirements.

It seems solvable, but not trivial.

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