Not knowing all of the fine details involved, is it difficult to set-up to work through vbulletin?
Is the process very intense and is it easy to set-up & test before you actually 'launch' the cloud?
I have set-up the vbulletin to work on my shared server with very few problems I just don't know if this is going to be very intense, or a matter of simply uploading the files to amazon and it will serve them.

Are there timeout issues when the local amazon server is serving images and such quicker then the main server is handling the rest of the process? I am afraid of users timing out on posting new threads and replies.
Sorry if this is to simple minded but I want the best experience for my visitors even if I don't possess the knowledge others do.

There's no advantage to the cloud when compared to regular servers, in fact you will overcomplicate yourself having to learn how that specific cloud works and adapt to it's limitations, and learn how to scale with it. Pricing wise, the bandwidth is very expensive, and will be cheaper to go with a server.

This is definately not the case.

We use S3/CF on a site with around 4M PVs per month, and found using S3/CF was so easy to set it, it was almost trivial, and our users notice faster downloads.

In addition, a good server, no matter how gigantic, cannot outperform a globally distributed content delivery network (CDN) which is what Amazon CloudFront is.

I think Mr. Royo is confusing "cloud computing" with Amazon's CloudFront, which is a global CDN, not a "cloud computing infrastructure".

In addition, I am not posting from "theory", we actually run it, serving millions of users each month from over 200 countries :cool:

silkroad - I recently moved just about all my js files and images to amazon s3 w/ cloudfront - results are good so far. This took an additional 4-5gb a day off of the database server (where they were previously being served)

Basically all I did is search templates for "clientscript" and added the CNAME I created for cloudfront in front of /clientscript

I would like to figure out how to move avatars and other 'dynamic' images over to s3. I read through this thread wich looks like didn't result in much: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=302300

I posted my experiences with CDN in that thread.

I used replacement variables rather than change the templates, and am using SimpleCDN on a test basis for now. I've noticed the bandwidth usage drop, so I know it's working.

On our server, avatars are in /forums/images/customavatars, so they are served by the CDN thanks to my directing the entire /images directory to SimpleCDN. The difference, though, is that SimpleCDN uses a "mirror" type of delivery where, if an image is requested from the CDN, and it is not cached there, it will grab it from the server. That is why I can safely push the avatars to visitors via SimpleCDN.

I don't know if Amazon has any mechanism like that, or if you could use something like rsync with your avatar directory to an extent where new avatars would appear after a short delay. (If I did it, I would change text to tell visitors that their new avatar would be active within five minutes, and have cron run rsync every five minutes to push the files out to the CDN.) Not ideal, of course.

Just some random thoughts (from a mind that is currently half awake ;) ).

I actually saw your post, redwing, and thought a replacement variable is a better idea. I don't believe Amazon has a mirror type system like SimpleCDN. It may be even simpler for that reason.

I'm curious about the Amazon solution, so I'll be reading up on that in the future. (I have too many projects going on right now to think about it.) For our purposes, SimpleCDN's service works well enough, and it's low-maintenance enough that I don't have to worry about setting anything up to sync our images between the forum and CDN. (We're all volunteer, so the less time I have to spend on it, the better. ;) ) Even so, it's a bargain. My "free" $15 lasted quite awhile, at least 6 weeks or so.

Yes, we noticed a drop in bandwidth usage (of course) and also a faster user response time, especially our users in Asia Pacific where there Amazon CF has CDN nodes:

• United States
  1. Ashburn, VA
  2. Dallas/Fort Worth, TX
  3. Los Angeles, CA
  4. Miami, FL
  5. Newark, NJ
  6. Palo Alto, CA
  7. Seattle, WA
  8. St. Louis, MO
• Europe
  1. Amsterdam
  2. Dublin
  3. Frankfurt
  4. London
• Asia
  1. Hong Kong
  2. Tokyo

Whoooo, that is very nice! I like that feature very much. The issue we had (have) with SimpleCDN is that they do not have international nodes. We like the Amazon CF CDN because of their 8 CDN nodes in the US, 4 in Europe and 2 in Asia (and they continue to expand and add more). I would consider SimpleCDN if they had a global reach like CF.

Yes, there are plenty of command line tools to update Amazon S3 and sync the images between CF/S3 and the server. We currently don't do it, but might consider it in the future. I like the SimpleCDN method on pulling missing files from the original server. That is very nice. So, I'll take this up with Amazon CF.

Cheers.

--------------- Added [DATE]1251136521[/DATE] at [TIME]1251136521[/TIME] ---------------

We user RR for this.. Worked great.

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Another alternative, of course, is to use mod_rewrite and 301 over to the CDN of your choice, and not bother with editing templates or adding RRs.

..... FWIW

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FYI:

http://developer.amazonwebservices.c...threadID=35547

I think SimpleCDN had one or two in Europe, but I don't remember exactly. But, they did have plans for expanding in the near future, so I'm sure they'll have more resources as time goes on. I figured that having even just a couple of servers spread around the U.S. was better than our single web server, which serves from only one location. Most of our traffic is U.S./Canada based, with a sizeable chunk from Europe, but we only have just a few visitors from elsewhere in the world.

SimpleCDN calls ours a Mirror Bucket. $0.039 US per GB of transfer, with no other fees for storage or setup. So last week, it cost us a whole $1.56 to deliver just over 40GB of files. Now you can see why we like it. ;) Since I have some usage stats, I should compare the costs to Amazon CF.

One thing some users may not like is that SimpleCDN is evolving...quickly. When I signed up over a month ago, the services had different names, but now they have reverted back to their "bucket" naming for their service levels. Their pricing has changed for Mirror Buckets too, although in a good way: once you deliver so much content, your pricing drops to a lower tier. My only fear is that there will be a price JUMP, and knock it out of affordability. But heck, they give you $15 in "play money" to try it out for free. That's why I'm not ruling out Amazon--if anything should happen and we need to host these files somewhere else, I'd like to be prepared with a backup plan.

AWS CF charges in many ways ways:

(1) Uploading files to S3 storage (bandwidth).
(2) Pulling from CF to S3 (bandwidth and per request) and
(3) Pulling from the CF CDN (per request and bandwidth).

There are probally more charges. AWS CF/S3 is not cheap.

I wonder if there is a price comparision on the net?

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I was checking.... I think I'm going to give SimpleCDN a try and compare with Cloudfront...

Thanks for the tip about "Mirror Bucket" :)

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OK, I see, you are 301'ing your entire image directory :-)

That explains how you get the customavatars in the CDN. I searched the templates and the phases and could never find how to set a CDN URL for avatars (and a few other hard coded image paths).

I don't understand why Jelsoft hard coded the customavatar domain as the forum domain and made it necessary to 301 those over to a CDN :(