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  1. Stackups
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  5. Amazon CloudFront vs Amazon S3

Amazon CloudFront vs Amazon S3

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Amazon CloudFront
Amazon CloudFront
Stacks21.4K
Followers10.8K
Votes935
Amazon S3
Amazon S3
Stacks55.1K
Followers40.2K
Votes2.0K

Amazon CloudFront vs Amazon S3: What are the differences?

Introduction:

In this markdown, we will discuss the key differences between Amazon CloudFront and Amazon S3.

  1. Data Storage and Content Delivery: Amazon S3 is a cloud-based object storage service that allows users to store and retrieve large amounts of data from anywhere on the web. On the other hand, Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery network (CDN) that delivers data, videos, applications, and APIs to end-users with low latency and high transfer speeds.

  2. Data Scope: Amazon S3 is primarily used for storage and retrieval of data objects. It offers simple storage and standard retrieval as its default storage class. On the contrary, Amazon CloudFront focuses on content delivery, caching, and accelerating the distribution of content worldwide.

  3. Edge Locations: Amazon CloudFront leverages a global network of edge locations spread across different geographical regions. These edge locations act as caching endpoints, reducing latency and improving content delivery. Conversely, Amazon S3 does not have edge locations as it is mainly used for object storage and retrieval from specific data centers.

  4. Cache Behavior: Amazon CloudFront automatically caches content at edge locations, which means subsequent requests for the same content can be served directly from the edge location without having to fetch it from the origin server. In contrast, Amazon S3 does not have built-in caching capabilities. When using Amazon S3, content needs to be retrieved from the origin server each time, without the automatic caching provided by CloudFront.

  5. Content Distribution Network: Amazon CloudFront acts as a global content distribution network (CDN), enabling faster and more efficient delivery of content to end-users across the globe. This is achieved by caching content at edge locations, reducing the round trip time for data requests. Amazon S3, on the other hand, does not offer the same level of content distribution and acceleration as it lacks the caching infrastructure of CloudFront.

  6. Pricing Model: The pricing model for Amazon S3 is primarily based on the amount of data stored and the number of requests made to access that data. In contrast, Amazon CloudFront pricing is based on data transfer out and the number of requests made to access content via the CDN. Therefore, CloudFront usage can incur additional charges for content delivery and caching services compared to S3.

In summary, Amazon S3 is a cloud-based object storage service primarily used for storing and retrieving data objects, while Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery network that focuses on caching and accelerating the global distribution of content, providing faster and more efficient content delivery to end-users.

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Advice on Amazon CloudFront, Amazon S3

Oleksandr
Oleksandr

Senior Software Engineer at joyn

Dec 7, 2019

Needs advice

At Joyn we use AWS infrastructures extensively, so we need a wide range of different tools starting from file storage until the health monitoring of our running services. For Smart TV stack we use S3 to mostly store static files (like scripts, styles and html), CloudFront to keep good response times using the cache, Lambda to recognize the TV platform and serve appropriate bundle (except Samsung Tizen platform where application is packaged), CloudWatch to receive alerts in case we have any issues inside of our lambda function.

28.1k views28.1k
Comments
Gabriel
Gabriel

CEO at NaoLogic Inc

Dec 24, 2019

Decided

We offer our customer HIPAA compliant storage. After analyzing the market, we decided to go with Google Storage. The Nodejs API is ok, still not ES6 and can be very confusing to use. For each new customer, we created a different bucket so they can have individual data and not have to worry about data loss. After 1000+ customers we started seeing many problems with the creation of new buckets, with saving or retrieving a new file. Many false positive: the Promise returned ok, but in reality, it failed.

That's why we switched to S3 that just works.

330k views330k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Amazon CloudFront
Amazon CloudFront
Amazon S3
Amazon S3

Amazon CloudFront can be used to deliver your entire website, including dynamic, static, streaming, and interactive content using a global network of edge locations. Requests for your content are automatically routed to the nearest edge location, so content is delivered with the best possible performance.

Amazon Simple Storage Service provides a fully redundant data storage infrastructure for storing and retrieving any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web

Fast- Using a network of edge locations around the world, Amazon CloudFront caches copies of your static content close to viewers, lowering latency when they download your objects and giving you the high, sustained data transfer rates needed to deliver large popular objects to end users at scale.;Simple- A single API call lets you get started distributing content from your Amazon S3 bucket or Amazon EC2 instance or other origin server through the Amazon CloudFront network.;Designed for use with other Amazon Web Services Amazon CloudFront is designed for use with other Amazon Web Services, including Amazon S3, where you can durably store the definitive versions of your static files, and Amazon EC2, where you can run your application server for dynamically generated content.;Cost-Effective- Amazon CloudFront passes on the benefits of Amazon’s scale to you. You pay only for the content that you deliver through the network, without minimum commitments or up-front fees.;Elastic- With Amazon CloudFront, you don’t need to worry about maintaining expensive web-server capacity to meet the demand from potential traffic spikes for your content. The service automatically responds as demand increases or decreases without any intervention from you.;Reliable- Amazon CloudFront is built using Amazon’s highly reliable infrastructure. The distributed nature of edge locations used by Amazon CloudFront automatically routes end users to the closest available location as required by network conditions.;Global- Amazon CloudFront uses a global network of edge locations, located near your end users in the United States, Europe, Asia, and South America.
Write, read, and delete objects containing from 1 byte to 5 terabytes of data each. The number of objects you can store is unlimited.;Each object is stored in a bucket and retrieved via a unique, developer-assigned key.;A bucket can be stored in one of several Regions. You can choose a Region to optimize for latency, minimize costs, or address regulatory requirements. Amazon S3 is currently available in the US Standard, US West (Oregon), US West (Northern California), EU (Ireland), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Asia Pacific (Sydney), South America (Sao Paulo), and GovCloud (US) Regions. The US Standard Region automatically routes requests to facilities in Northern Virginia or the Pacific Northwest using network maps.;Objects stored in a Region never leave the Region unless you transfer them out. For example, objects stored in the EU (Ireland) Region never leave the EU.;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.;Options for secure data upload/download and encryption of data at rest are provided for additional data protection.;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. The default download protocol is HTTP. A BitTorrent protocol interface is provided to lower costs for high-scale distribution.;Provides functionality to simplify manageability of data through its lifetime. Includes options for segregating data by buckets, monitoring and controlling spend, and automatically archiving data to even lower cost storage options. These options can be easily administered from the Amazon S3 Management Console.;Reliability backed with the Amazon S3 Service Level Agreement.
Statistics
Stacks
21.4K
Stacks
55.1K
Followers
10.8K
Followers
40.2K
Votes
935
Votes
2.0K
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 245
    Fast
  • 166
    Cdn
  • 157
    Compatible with other aws services
  • 125
    Simple
  • 108
    Global
Cons
  • 3
    UI could use some work
  • 1
    Invalidations take so long
Pros
  • 590
    Reliable
  • 492
    Scalable
  • 456
    Cheap
  • 329
    Simple & easy
  • 83
    Many sdks
Cons
  • 7
    Permissions take some time to get right
  • 6
    Takes time/work to organize buckets & folders properly
  • 6
    Requires a credit card
  • 3
    Complex to set up

What are some alternatives to Amazon CloudFront, Amazon S3?

CloudFlare

CloudFlare

Cloudflare speeds up and protects millions of websites, APIs, SaaS services, and other properties connected to the Internet.

KeyCDN

KeyCDN

KeyCDN offers super fast and secure content delivery for minimal loading time. In addition to the CDN, it also offers advanced image processing and many other features such as live logs and Let's Encrypt SSL.

Fastly

Fastly

Fastly's real-time content delivery network gives you total control over your content, unprecedented access to performance analytics, and the ability to instantly update content in 150 milliseconds.

MaxCDN

MaxCDN

The MaxCDN Content Delivery Network efficiently delivers your site’s static file through hundreds of servers instead of slogging through a single host. This "smart route" technology distributes your content to your visitors via the city closest to them.

Amazon EBS

Amazon EBS

Amazon EBS volumes are network-attached, and persist independently from the life of an instance. Amazon EBS provides highly available, highly reliable, predictable storage volumes that can be attached to a running Amazon EC2 instance and exposed as a device within the instance. Amazon EBS is particularly suited for applications that require a database, file system, or access to raw block level storage.

Google Cloud Storage

Google Cloud Storage

Google Cloud Storage allows world-wide storing and retrieval of any amount of data and at any time. It provides a simple programming interface which enables developers to take advantage of Google's own reliable and fast networking infrastructure to perform data operations in a secure and cost effective manner. If expansion needs arise, developers can benefit from the scalability provided by Google's infrastructure.

Azure Storage

Azure Storage

Azure Storage provides the flexibility to store and retrieve large amounts of unstructured data, such as documents and media files with Azure Blobs; structured nosql based data with Azure Tables; reliable messages with Azure Queues, and use SMB based Azure Files for migrating on-premises applications to the cloud.

jsDelivr

jsDelivr

jsDelivr is a free CDN for open source developers, with advanced features for javascript projects with access to NPM and Github It uses multiple CDN providers, resulting in the best possible uptime and performance.

Minio

Minio

Minio is an object storage server compatible with Amazon S3 and licensed under Apache 2.0 License

OpenEBS

OpenEBS

OpenEBS allows you to treat your persistent workload containers, such as DBs on containers, just like other containers. OpenEBS itself is deployed as just another container on your host.

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