[CAnet - news] Amazon opens network storge for public using web service

Amazon S3 - Simple Storage Service
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[Thanks to Franco Travastino for this pointer.  He says "As you often talk
about internet programming in your blogs, I thought you would be interested
to Amazon's new addition to its fabled Web Services infrastructure. While we
have seen the raise (and fall) of storage service providers for either block
or file storage, this particular realization is quite interesting because it
can be accessed entirely within Web Services. Those folks doing mashups, for
instance, will be able to add reliable storage to the mix yet without
changing the programming model.

(this is my own commentary --- I'm not in any way related to Amazon.com)."

-franco]


http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html/ref=sc_fe_l_2/002-7332978-8798410?%5Fen
coding=UTF8&node=16427261&no=3435361

Amazon S3 is storage for the Internet. It is designed to make web-scale
computing easier for developers.

Amazon S3 provides a simple web services interface that can be used to store
and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web. It
gives any developer access to the same highly scalable, reliable, fast,
inexpensive data storage infrastructure that Amazon uses to run its own
global network of web sites. The service aims to maximize benefits of scale
and to pass those benefits on to developers.

Amazon S3 Functionality

Amazon S3 is intentionally built with a minimal feature set.

    * Write, read, and delete objects containing from 1 byte to 5 gigabytes
of data each. The number of objects you can store is unlimited.
    * Each object is stored and retrieved via a unique, developer-assigned
key.
    * Authentication mechanisms are provided to ensure that data is kept
secure from unauthorized access. Objects can be made private or public, and
rights can be granted to specific users.
    * Uses standards-based REST and SOAP interfaces designed to work with
any Internet-development toolkit.
    * Built to be flexible so that protocol or functional layers can easily
be added.  Default download protocol is HTTP.  A BitTorrent (TM) protocol
interface is provided to lower costs for high-scale distribution.
Additional interfaces will be added in the future. 

Amazon S3 Design Requirements

Amazon S3 is based on the idea that quality Internet-based storage should be
taken for granted. It helps free developers from worrying about where they
are going to store data, whether it will be safe and secure, the costs
associated with server maintenance, or whether they have enough storage
available. The functionality is simple and robust: Store any amount of data
inexpensively and securely, while ensuring that the data will always be
available when you need it. Amazon S3 enables developers to focus on
innovating with data, rather than figuring out how to store it.

Amazon built S3 to fulfill the following design requirements:

    * Scalable: Amazon S3 can scale in terms of storage, request rate, and
users to support an unlimited number of web-scale applications. It uses
scale as an advantage: Adding nodes to the system increases, not decreases,
its availability, speed, throughput, capacity, and robustness.

    * Reliable: Store data durably, with 99.99% availability. There can be
no single points of failure. All failures must be tolerated or repaired by
the system without any downtime.

    * Fast: Amazon S3 must be fast enough to support high-performance
applications. Server-side latency must be insignificant relative to Internet
latency. Any performance bottlenecks can be fixed by simply adding nodes to
the system.

    * Inexpensive: Amazon S3 is built from inexpensive commodity hardware
components. As a result, frequent node failure is the norm and must not
affect the overall system. It must be hardware-agnostic, so that savings can
be captured as Amazon continues to drive down infrastructure costs.

    * Simple: Building highly scalable, reliable, fast, and inexpensive
storage is difficult. Doing so in a way that makes it easy to use for any
application anywhere is more difficult. Amazon S3 must do both. 

A forcing-function for the design was that a single Amazon S3 distributed
system must support the needs of both internal Amazon applications and
external developers of any application. This means that it must be fast and
reliable enough to run Amazon.com's websites, while flexible enough that any
developer can use it for any data storage need.

Amazon S3 Design Principles

Amazon used the following principles of distributed system design to meet S3
requirements:

    * Decentralization: Use fully decentralized techniques to remove scaling
bottlenecks and single points of failure.

    * Asynchrony: The system makes progress under all circumstances.

    * Autonomy: The system is designed such that individual components can
make decisions based on local information.

    * Local responsibility: Each individual component is responsible for
achieving its consistency; this is never the burden of its peers.

    * Controlled concurrency: Operations are designed such that no or
limited concurrency control is required.

    * Failure tolerant: The system considers the failure of components to be
a normal mode of operation, and continues operation with no or minimal
interruption.

    * Controlled parallelism: Abstractions used in the system are of such
granularity that parallelism can be used to improve performance and
robustness of recovery or the introduction of new nodes.

    * Decompose into small well-understood building blocks: Do not try to
provide a single service that does everything for everyone, but instead
build small components that can be used as building blocks for other
services.

    * Symmetry: Nodes in the system are identical in terms of functionality,
and require no or minimal node-specific configuration to function.

    * Simplicity: The system should be made as simple as possible (- but no
simpler). 

Intended Usage and Restrictions

    * Your use of this service is subject to the Amazon Web Services
Licensing Agreement. 

These news items and comments are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect
those  of the CANARIE board or management.

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