Use Amazon CloudFront together with Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration? - amazon-web-services

I read this and understand the difference between CloudFront and S3 Transfer Acceleration. Since both can improve the download speed(though S3 Transfer Acceleration is mainly for uploading, it also improving download), can I use them together? Based on my test, it seems to be impossible as CloudFront will always take the S3 bucket URL like xxx.s3.amazonaws.com/ as the source. It cannot take xxx.s3-accelerate.amazonaws.com as the source.

Amazon CloudFront caches content in 225+ Points of Presence.
The first user who requests a piece of content in a particular location will trigger the edge location to 'pull' the content from the origin. Future requests for that content will be served from the cache. It is an excellent way to reduce latency for users spread around the world.
Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration always makes a request back to the source bucket. This is good for uploading, but does not reduce latency for users spread around the world since all of their requests would need to go to the source bucket.
You might be able to have CloudFront in front of S3 Transfer Acceleration, but CloudFront uses the AWS network to reach origin buckets, so it is unlikely to make any difference. If you do experiment with this, let us know your findings!

Related

S3 Transfer Acceleration Semantics

I have a rather simple question which I cannot find an explicit answer to, but anyone using the subject should be able to answer.
Does S3 Transfer Acceleration follow an eventual model i.e. clients upload to a CF edge location, get the response back and then the data is eventually moved to a bucket OR is the performance (speed) gain is simply because of the AWS internal network usage and upon the request completion the data is always 100% IN the S3 bucket?
If it's the former is there any SLA regarding how fast this eventual process is?
S3 Transfer Acceleration uses CloudFront and CloudFront doesn't cache POST/PUT request which means the data gets uploaded to the S3 at the same time. CloudFront doesn't buffer it, it simply saves your RTT (round trip time) by letting you connect to the nearest edge location compare to when you connect to S3 endpoint situated far from you.
And, since transfer between CloudFront and S3 is in AWS Network, it should be faster.
(buffer in the sense you can consider Acceleration endpoint as proxy).
S3 Transfer Acceleration uses portions of the CloudFront infrastructure to provide low-latency, performance-optimized connectivity from browser to edge to bucket.
It does not use any storage or caching components of CloudFront.
The acceleration is only TLS and transport (buffer and routing) related; all HTTP interactions are ultimately end-to-end with the actual S3 bucket, with CloudFront edge servers providing termination for the browser-facing TLS session and a reverse-proxy function.
Nothing stored outside the bucket, so S3's standard consistency model applies.

Amazon S3 as cdn copying images from my server

I have searched a lot on this but all I get is using CloudFront (CDN) in collaboration with S3.
I want to do something different.
CloudFront works as a CDN with its Origin set to either my domain where images are, or S3.
If I set it to my domain, there is an issue of having my hosting space used.
If I use it with S3, the question is, how to get my images to S3 without much hassle? In case of CDN, this is automatic, as every call to CloudFront copies the image from my server automatically.
Is it possible that CloudFront works with S3 but if image is not present on S3, it copies it from my server to S3?
Or may be S3 itself works as CDN (best solution). I have seen on some sites that they use s3 urls for hosting their images, like this:
https://retsimages.s3.amazonaws.com/14/A10363214_6.jpg
How is that possible?
If I set it to my domain, there is an issue of having my hosting space used.
More expensive than the storage space is the cost of having a server sitting there ready to handle the request. Your application logic konws when the images change; that's the time to put them in S3.
how to get my images to S3 without much hassle?
There's an SDK for just about every language, so upload the image as it comes in. Use s3cmd sync to move the images you have. Then you can just turn off your server.
Or may be S3 itself works as CDN
CloudFront can use a customer provided dns name and matching certificate so that you can use a custom domain with https. It can integrate into AWS WAF which S3 cannot directly. Otherwise, CDN behaves similarly to s3. CloudFront should provide better caching and endpoint locality, but you'll see little functional difference at low volumes. Neither is read-after-write consistent, but Cloudfront caches additionally. Pricing is unlikely to make CloudFront cheaper for most uses.
Is it possible that CloudFront works with S3 but if image is not present on S3, it copies it from my server to S3?
Close.
CloudFront does have a feature that would help move you in this direction -- origin groups. Create an origin group with S3 as primary and your server as secondary. Any time CloudFront encounters a cache miss, it will first check S3, and only if the image is not there, it will retry by sending the request to your server. It will cache the response, but it will not remember the source of the object -- so subsequent requests on future cache misses for the same object will always try S3 first.
This means something on your server needs to be responsible for ultimately moving images to S3 -- but as long as the image exists in one place or the other, the image will be served by CloudFront and cached in CloudFront in the edge or edges (up to two -- one global/outer, one regional/inner) that handled the request.

AWS S3 - How to serve (and receive) files to/from user based on their geographical location?

Here's my situation and my goal(s):
I have a SaaS where users (globally) can upload audio files. These audio files are then later streamed (via HTML5 <audio>) to potentially anyone in the world. Currently, the only bucket hosting files is in us-west-2, which is obviously problematic when EU customers upload files, and EU users stream audio.
How can I have AWS:
Serve up audio files to a user, using the appropriate region based on their geographical location
Receive uploads using the S3 bucket (region) closest to the user uploading files
I thought maybe CloudFront would do the trick, but AFAIK, CloudFront requires a file to be downloaded once before it actually caches it, and that won't work for my SaaS. A common use case is that someone in the US might upload an important audio file for someone in Germany to listen to. I would need that person in Germany to experience as fast a streaming experience as possible, and currently I'm getting complaints of slow load times and choppy audio.
S3 cross-region replication might make sense (replicating to eu-central-1 as a good starting point, to cover customers in Scandinavia, other European countries, and the UK), but I'm not sure how to make a single S3 URL pull the file from a specific bucket based on the user's geographical location.
What's the best solution here, and how do I execute it?
To improve file upload performance, you can use Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration which enables fast, easy, and secure transfers of files over long distances between your client and an S3 bucket. Transfer Acceleration takes advantage of Amazon CloudFront’s globally distributed edge locations. As the data arrives at an edge location, data is routed to Amazon S3 over an optimized network path.
To improve file download performance, you need to use AWS Cloudfront caching. Since Cloudfront caches content from first request onwards, if you need improve even the first request performance per region, you can automatically populate the cache by requesting the URL timely from different regions.

Are there any difference between amazon cloudfront and amazon s3 transfer acceleration?

I have read documents about them, but I don't know their difference exactly.
could you let me know what's the difference?
TL;DR: CloudFront is for content delivery. S3 Transfer Acceleration is for faster transfers and higher throughput to S3 buckets (mainly uploads).
Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration is an S3 feature that accelerates uploads to S3 buckets using AWS Edge locations - the same Edge locations as in AWS CloudFront service.
However, (a) creating a CloudFront distribution with an origin pointing to your S3 bucket and (b) enabling S3 Transfer acceleration for your bucket - are two different things serving two different purposes.
When you create a CloudFront distribution with an origin pointing to your S3 bucket, you enable caching on Edge locations. Consequent requests to the same objects will be served from the Edge cache which is faster for the end user and also reduces the load on your origin. CloudFront is primarily used as a content delivery service.
When you enable S3 Transfer Acceleration for your S3 bucket and use <bucket>.s3-accelerate.amazonaws.com instead of the default S3 endpoint, the transfers are performed via the same Edge locations, but the network path is optimized for long-distance large-object uploads. Extra resources and optimizations are used to achieve higher throughput. No caching on Edge locations.
More inromation:
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-storage-update-amazon-s3-transfer-acceleration-larger-snowballs-in-more-regions/
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/transfer-acceleration-examples.html
https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2016/04/transfer-files-into-amazon-s3-up-to-300-percent-faster/
If you are interested in the difference between these two options pertaining to uploading content to S3 you may be interested in the following from Amazon's FAQ for S3:
Q. How should I choose between Transfer Acceleration and Amazon
CloudFront’s PUT/POST? Transfer Acceleration optimizes the TCP
protocol and adds additional intelligence between the client and the
S3 bucket, making Transfer Acceleration a better choice if a higher
throughput is desired. If you have objects that are smaller than 1GB
or if the data set is less than 1GB in size, you should consider using
Amazon CloudFront's PUT/POST commands for optimal performance.
As the FAQ answer states, transfer acceleration should be used if you need higher throughput.
Per the FAQs:
Q: How should I choose between S3 Transfer Acceleration and Amazon CloudFront’s PUT/POST?
S3 Transfer Acceleration optimizes the TCP protocol and adds additional intelligence between the client and the S3 bucket, making S3 Transfer Acceleration a better choice if a higher throughput is desired. If you have objects that are smaller than 1GB or if the data set is less than 1GB in size, you should consider using Amazon CloudFront's PUT/POST commands for optimal performance.
https://aws.amazon.com/s3/faqs/#s3ta
both Amazon cloudfront and amazon S3 are very different. Here is what these are for:
Amazon S3 provides a storage service on the internet while Amazon CloudFront is a web service for content delivery. Amazon S3 uses its own global network of websites while Amazon CloudFront delivers your content through a worldwide network of edge locations. Major differences in the features of both these services are mentioned Here.
And if you want to know about the S3 transfer accelerators, it actually takes advantage of Amazon CloudFront’s globally distributed edge locations to deliver/transfer fast, easy, and secure way of files over long distances between your client and an S3 bucket. Want to read more about S3 transfer accelerator, click here.
CloudFront is download direction only, so it is not offering a performant upload to the origin. Whereas S3 with Transfer Acceleration, it will utilize Edge locations like CloudFront both for upload and download.

Difference between Amazon S3 cross region replication and Cloudfront

After reading some AWS documentations, I am wondering what's the difference between these different use cases if I want to delivery (js, css, images and api request) content in Asia (including China), US, and EU.
Store my images and static files on S3 US region and setup EU and Asia(Japan or Singapore) cross region replication to sync with US region S3.
Store my images and static files on S3 US region and setup cloudfront CDN to cache my content in different locations after initial request.
Do both above (if there is significant performance improvement).
What is the most cost effective solution if I need to achieve global deployment? And how to make request from China consistent and stable (I tried cloudfront+s3(us-west), it's fast but the performance is not consistent)?
PS. In early stage, I don't expect too many user requests, but users spread globally and I want them to have similar experience. The majority of my content are panorama images which I'd expect to load ~30MB (10 high res images) data sequentially in each visit.
Cross region replication will copy everything in a bucket in one region to a different bucket in another region. This is really only for extra backup/redundancy in case an entire AWS region goes down. It has nothing to do with performance. Note that it replicates to a different bucket, so you would need to use different URLs to access the files in each bucket.
CloudFront is a Content Delivery Network. S3 is simply a file storage service. Serving a file directly from S3 can have performance issues, which is why it is a good idea to put a CDN in front of S3. It sounds like you definitely need a CDN, and it sounds like you have tested CloudFront and are unimpressed. It also sounds like you need a CDN with a larger presence in China.
There is no reason you have to chose CloudFront as your CDN just because you are using other AWS services. You should look at other CDN services and see what their edge networks looks like. Given your requirements I would highly recommend you take a look at CloudFlare. They have quite a few edge network locations in China.
Another option might be to use a CDN that you can actually push your files to. I've used this feature in the past with MaxCDN. You would push your files to the CDN via FTP, and the files would automatically be pushed to all edge network locations and cached until you push an update. For your use case of large image downloads, this might provide a more performant caching mechanism. MaxCDN doesn't appear to have a large China presence though, and the bandwidth charges would be more expensive than CloudFlare.
If you want to serve your files in S3 buckets to all around the world, then I believe you may consider using S3 Transfer acceleration. It can be used in cases where you either upload to or download from your S3 bucket . Or you may also try AWS Global Accelerator
CloudFront's job is to cache content at hundreds of caches ("edge locations") around the world, making them more quickly accessible to users around the world. By caching content at locations close to users, users can get responses to their requests more quickly than they otherwise would.
S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR) simply copies an S3 bucket from one region to another. This is useful for backing up data, and it also can be used to speed up content delivery for a particular region. Unlike CloudFront, CRR supports real-time updating of bucket data, which may be important in situations where data needs to be current (e.g. a website with frequently-changing content). However, it's also more of a hassle to manage than CloudFront is, and more expensive on a multi-region scale.
If you want to achieve global deployment in a cost-effective way, then CloudFront would probably be the better of the two, except in the special situation outlined in the previous paragraph.