{"id":262,"date":"2011-01-20T17:14:56","date_gmt":"2011-01-20T22:14:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/edtech\/?p=262"},"modified":"2011-02-12T14:03:49","modified_gmt":"2011-02-12T19:03:49","slug":"moving-huge-files-to-the-cloud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/edtech\/2011\/01\/20\/moving-huge-files-to-the-cloud\/","title":{"rendered":"Moving Huge Files to the Cloud"},"content":{"rendered":"

After reading Mike Richwalsky’s\u00a0post<\/a> on Yottaa and cloud computing, I started experimenting with Amazon’s cloud service and possible integration with the Mixxer<\/a> site running on Drupal<\/a>. \u00a0This post is a bit more technical than what I usually write here, but even if you’re not heavy techie, it can hopefully give you an idea that’s simple and useful enough that your techie types wouldn’t mind implementing it.<\/p>\n

With the growth of video, storage and bandwidth have become major issues for many instructional technology departments. \u00a0For most, this means either video projects are uploaded to YouTube with their accompanying restrictions and quality or an expensive server and accompanying bandwidth need to be paid for by the college. \u00a0This is the demand side of the equation.<\/p>\n

Amazon on the other hand has a great deal of supply when it comes to servers, storage and bandwidth. \u00a0This is due not just to their huge size, but also because their business depends on the ability to handle large and sudden bursts of traffic around the holidays. \u00a0A fact that came in handy when Wikileaks supporters tried and failed<\/a> to take down their servers.<\/p>\n

What this means for us is that we can upload large files, or large numbers of files, to servers scattered around the world for extremely low prices. \u00a0Basically one first uploads all the files to a “bucket” on Amazon’s S3 servers. \u00a0S3 is simple storage. \u00a0If all you need is downloadable files from one server, you can stop there. \u00a0Just make each file public on upload then distribute the url to whomever may need the files. \u00a0 Here is the pricing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you want to do streaming and video, you have to take it one step further by signing up for Cloudfront, creating a distribution of the bucket, and distributing another url. \u00a0In addition to streaming, this also means your content will be available on a number of servers around the world which can have a huge impact on performance. \u00a0In addition to the S3, you would have to look at this price chart<\/a> as well.<\/p>\n

Amazon has no minimum fee, which works out well for many class projects. \u00a0We often have a relative few number of very large files that will only be seen by a relative few people, but all at the same time. \u00a0To\u00a0accommodate\u00a0these peaks requires a rather expensive server and can strain bandwidth at peak times. \u00a0You’ll have to have an idea of how many GBs you would be uploading and distributing per month to compare prices, but if like us you’re dealing mostly with short Quicktime videos it’s quite cheap.<\/p>\n

The integration with Drupal is on hold for now. \u00a0For those interested, the CDN<\/a> and CloudFront<\/a> modules are the places to start. \u00a0I am going to wait until I upgrade to Drupal 7 when it looks the CDN module in particular will be able to serve all of my static files from Cloudfront without tinkering with the core Drupal php code, which I try to avoid.<\/p>\n

Update:<\/p>\n

Google has updated their storage options. \u00a0Also incredibly cheap, but pay attention to single file size limits. \u00a0One GB of video isn’t a lot.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/rww.to\/ieQO5m<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After reading Mike Richwalsky’s\u00a0post on Yottaa and cloud computing, I started experimenting with Amazon’s cloud service and possible integration with the Mixxer site running on Drupal. \u00a0This post is a bit more technical than what I usually write here, but … Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":776,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[8162],"class_list":["post-262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-cloud-computing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/edtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/edtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/edtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/edtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/776"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/edtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/edtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/edtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/edtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/edtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}