S3for.Me – cheap alternative S3 cloud storage

http://www.s3for.me/index.html

by vanwilder77 • 13 years ago

86 98 13 years ago

fiatmoney• 13 years ago

Seems like they should get ready for the trademark infringement letter.

Also, the math they use to get their 99.9999% durability is a bit sketchy - that 1% failure rate for a HDD isn't independent of its age, stress level, temperature, batch number, etc., and likely doesn't include the odds of corruption as opposed to failure. At scale you can't simply rely on your vendors' claims.

hannibal52• 13 years ago

They say that they store data in three separate servers in two data centers. Three HDD's must fail between two data accesses or scrubs to lose data from HDD failures.

For 99.99999% durability their way of doing things is good enough to protect from HDD failures. Of course, there are other failure scenarios.

pearjuice3• 13 years ago

trademark infringement letter

From who exactly?

aristidb2• 13 years ago

Amazon.com, Inc.?

hannibal52• 13 years ago

Amazon has trademarked names like “Amazon S3”, “AWS”, “Amazon EC2” and “EC2” but not S3

https://aws.amazon.com/trademark-guidelines/

aristidb2• 13 years ago

Doesn't Trademark law operate on the basis of possible confusion? And I definitely see that risk there. IANAL though.

Jach• 13 years ago

If this company had registered the "S3" trademark before Amazon had registered "Amazon S3", then this company probably could have gotten a settlement amount from Amazon... In the actual case I'd expect the company to get a C&D from Amazon at some point, with eventual negotiations being either to change the name or add a prominent header noting the lack of relation to Amazon S3.

cowsandmilk• 13 years ago

you are reading that guideline incorrectly. That's a contract that gives permission to use the trademarks listed under certain conditions. That is not a guide to what amazon may claim as trademarks.

stewars• 13 years ago

S3 claims 99.999999999 (eleven nines) of durability. This is not comparable S3.

3825• 13 years ago

I can claim anything I want and refund you for the time I was offline. How will that help anyone?

We guarantee 99.9999% storage durability and 99.99% availability over a given year. Each byte is stored on three separate servers in two datacenters at the same time to achieve this level.

99.99% means you are violating your promise if you are down for 53 minutes over a given year[0]. What happens when (not if) this happens? If you would credit me back a couple of bucks and call it even, the whole four nine thing is useless. I don't understand the promise of high availability. On one hand it seems difficult to achieve and on the other hand it seems there is not much penalty for failing your promise.

[0] (3.15569e7*(100-99.99)/100)/(60)

sengstrom• 13 years ago

I don't think that is the main problem with that calculation. They assume to know the risk of failure over one year. Having three separate copies would allow you to estimate the risk as they do if they don't intend to monitor failures over shorter times than that (which would be a very very bad idea). Therefore the risk is actually much smaller since one would presume that they do something about it when the first hard drive fails...

As noted elsewhere this is hardly the only source of potential data loss however.

Koulia• 13 years ago

I think the sign picture you guys made looks unprofessional - http://www.s3for.me/images/s3forme4.png

Otherwise good stuff!

notmyname3• 13 years ago

I'm interested on more detail on this. How does it work? Object storage at scale is not a trivial problem to solve. Are they using their own storage engine or are they using an open-source one? Where are the docs? "Just look at the S3 docs" is a little vague since so much of S3 has to do with AWS product integration rather than just storage (eg billing, regions, identity/ACLs, etc).

S3ForMe21• 13 years ago

We are using our own self-written software to implement S3 protocol. We do not support all enterprise-features like extended ACL, regions, encryption, this makes our software much simpler and easier to develop. You can find basic documentation here https://my.s3for.me/client/docs/index, all the rest documentation can be found at Amazon S3 documentation site, it is basically the same with small differences. Edit: can't post comments for some time (You're submitting too fast...), will reply later.

notmyname3• 13 years ago

Can you share more about your implementation? (Disclosure: I'm very interested since I work on OpenStack Swift.)

Starter questions:

How does data placement work? How is data checked for correctness? How do you do listings at scale? During hardware failures, do you still make any durability or availability guarantees? How do you handle hot content? How do you resolve conflicts (eg concurrent writes)?

crucifiction• 13 years ago

Lets see, it has less durability, unknown reliability (new company), and is housed in only two data centers in one region. So that means two of your three replicas are probably sitting on a rack right next to each other.

I can't imagine why it is marginally cheaper.

S3ForMe21• 13 years ago

Personally I can't understand why Amazon S3 is so expensive!

tomphoolery• 13 years ago

LOL wow. This needs to be on @ShitHNSays.

karl_gluck2• 13 years ago

Where are they located? (Outside of the US?)

I can't find anything on their website that lists physical contact information.

S3ForMe21• 13 years ago

Or datacenter is located at Germany

samstave• 13 years ago

Is this based on Ceph?

S3ForMe21• 13 years ago

No, we use self-written software, this means that we can fix any issue or add additionally functionality very fast and do not depend on any vendor.

karl_gluck2• 13 years ago

This is great news! I'll be checking this out for sure.

nly2• 13 years ago

Their IPs seem to assigned to Hetzner ( https://www.hetzner.de/ )

Which is interesting, because Hetzers standard bandwidth overage seems to be €2/TB (~ $0.26/GB)

noir_lord2• 13 years ago

99.99% uptime on Hetzner.

Based on my experience this should be really good.

S3ForMe21• 13 years ago

No, actually it is much cheaper, €2/TB means $0.0026/GB

NatW• 13 years ago

hmm. so if storing/transferring <1TB

Amazon (standard): $0.095/GB/mo |transfer out: $0.12/GB/mo

S3for.me: $0.060/GB/mo |transfer out: $0.04/GB/mo

draugadrotten• 13 years ago

As a European citizen, my first concern for US cloud storage is now a question of confidentiality.

This is not mentioned on the site's FAQ.

What is S3for.me's policy regarding NSA warrantless surveillance? Will S3for.me release a NSA transparency report, like Yahoo?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_%2...

S3ForMe21• 13 years ago

Absolutely not. edit: I meant that we do not disclose any user-related data to anyone without a court order.

djm_• 13 years ago

An NSA transparency report would be a good thing; are you sure that's what you were replying to?

zwily2• 13 years ago

Are you saying that you will "absolutely not" release an NSA transparency report? That sounds... odd.

rmoriz• 13 years ago

S3for.me is hosting at hetzner.de one of the largest german hosting companies. Unfortunately they have to provide a wiretapping API to police, secret service (BND / Bundesnachrichtendienst) and other govermental institutions. They are not allowed to talk about this or risk punishment.

Recent developments from Mr. Snowden show, that BND regularly sniffs and provides data to the NSA.

If you want to find out more about this, try to find a translation of the TKÜV (Telekommunikations-Überwachungsverordnung). It was established in 2002 http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/BND-ueberwachungsschn...

Update: http://www.bmwi.de/BMWi/Redaktion/PDF/Gesetz/TKUEV-deutsch-e...

The obligated party shall tolerate the installation and operation of equipment of the Federal Intelligence Service in its premises which shall only be installed and serviced by Federal Intelligence Service staff specially authorised and shall meet the following requirements:…

Miyamoto• 13 years ago

I like how the sign up button appears 5 times. They should A/B test that and see if it works. /s

S3ForMe21• 13 years ago

Our marketing guys said that it is a good idea :-)

jnardiello3• 13 years ago

2 times should be enough. 3 if you really want to make it clear. Marketing guys should burn in hell.

xur17• 13 years ago

I would seriously reconsider putting that button on a page more than once or twice. It makes it look unprofessional.

It looks like an interesting storage service, but like others mentioned, you should consider renaming it. I was convinced you were reselling Amazon S3 storage when I visited the site.

rheide• 13 years ago

I'm not sure who this is targeting. As a (very) small-scale user of S3 I hardly pay anything per month and would not even consider switching.

Large companies on the other hand need to have the reliability and security of a big name behind the storage. Why would they even consider moving to a no-name company that hasn't proven itself? Sorry, it just seems like the wrong niche to step in to.

pgroves• 13 years ago

I'm actually facing a decision right now in building a new app that has relatively heavy needs for data storage and number crunching. Each paying customer would have a relatively large amount of data per person compared to your average CRUD app.

I'd like to use DigitalOcean or Linode VPS machines for processing and as web servers, but then I need a large object store like S3. Rackspace and AWS have both object storage and VPS, but their VPS machines are underpowered for the price.

So ideally I would use Rackspace-Files or Amazon-S3 for storage, and DigitalOcean for number crunching, but I'd get killed on transfer rates from S3 to DigitalOcean (for example). Amazon and Rackspace have a trump card with free data transfer within their data centers. You have to use their slow machines to realistically use their object stores in this type of a use case.

So that's the 'S3' problem I need solved, which still isn't quite what S3ForMe is going after. Extremely cheap data transfers to/from major VPS providers.

gaadd33• 13 years ago

Why not use Rackspace-Files and get dedicated servers from Rackspace? That would solve your transfer rate issue and likely get you far better performance than Linode or DigitalOcean.

big_jim_slade• 13 years ago

If the quality, clarity and thoroughness of the public website is representative of the backend... I shudder to think.

S3ForMe21• 13 years ago

Backend is much better, but the public site must be redesigned, it is awful, I agree.

Kiro• 13 years ago

Worst name ever but nice service.

malanj• 13 years ago

It almost seems more like someone testing out a concept (mockup) than an actual final product.

I can't think that those prices/durability promises are realistic unless you're operating at massive scale.

electic• 13 years ago

Six 9's. Hmm, that is a lot and hard to digest.

philmcc• 13 years ago

Minor Advice: On your interactive chart, I'd arrange it so s3forme was first or last, and that it was a steadily increasing (or decreasing) value.

Also I'd consider changing the font/color on s3forme so that it 'pops' a bit more compared to your competitors. As is my guess is the user's eye is drawn to Rackspace.

dap3• 13 years ago

What's the long-term plan for competing with Amazon on price?

S3ForMe21• 13 years ago

Our prices will aways be lower than Amazon S3, I can tell this for sure. But our main advantage is support - you can always open a ticket and get an answer on your question within 24 hours, but usually much faster.

dap3• 13 years ago

Presumably, Amazon gets enormous volume discounts for the disk drives that would be a main cost of running S3, and they run their business with notoriously tiny margins. It would seem nearly impossible to undercut them for the same product at the same level of service.

gosukiwi• 13 years ago

Doesn't it have a free plan? Like amazon free 5gb storage per month, 15gb transfer.

joshstrange• 13 years ago

They give you $50 worth of credit when you sign up.

hemancuso• 13 years ago

Question for the company - why bother writing your own distributed object store when you could use Swift or CEPH?

toomuchtodo2• 13 years ago

Or Riak CS (which a large VM vendor is using to store VM-associated snapshots)

slynux• 13 years ago

Why would someone use s3for.me service instead of Mega ? In terms of speed, security and pricing how much worse/better is this service ?

mdaniel• 13 years ago

Last I checked, Mega does not support the Amazon S3 protocol nor even a RESTful one. IIRC, the majority of Mega magic is done in browser using a ton of JavaScript.

noir_lord2• 13 years ago

99.99 over a year (@365.256 * 86400) is about 52 minutes downtime.

I wouldn't want to promise that.

jnardiello3• 13 years ago

Allright, i won't be on the haters and trolls side this time. I'm actually very interested in your product as i was looking for an Amazon S3 replacement.

Pro: - Servers are located in Europe (WOOOW, fuck spying govs)

Not so good: - I think you had a great idea, got one (maybe 2,3) developers working on it for some time and rolled out this product. Which obviously is quite unfinished (on the business point of view, i have no hint on how the technical side is working as i never used it).

So, question for you guys: How the hell invoicing is working? As you could guess most of us work/own companies, we need freaking invoices for every cent we spend. No billing, no invoices, nothing like this in the private area, ideas?

IgorPartola• 13 years ago

The US has more legal ability to spy outside the country than inside. If you host in Europe, but do business in the US it is my understanding that both the NSA and the CIA can snoop on you, whereas if you are solely US based, you do not worry about the CIA.

patmcc• 13 years ago

It's a double edged sword though. Outside the US you can be spied on, inside the US you can be served a warrant from a US court.

moozeek• 13 years ago

Anonymous domain registration, no about us page, total lack of info about who's behind it = deal breaker

BTW: websites hosted by Germans are required to have an imprint ("Impressum") with full contact data incl. phone number.

haldujai3• 13 years ago

So did you steal all of your website's images or is there some stock image service that has all of these? If it's the latter please share.

Yours: http://www.s3for.me/images/s3forme1.png

Salesforce: http://blog.database.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/intro-db...

Your S3: http://www.s3for.me/images/s3forme8.png

S3 from 2011: http://themetest.hollywoodtools.com/files/2012/06/s32.png

You: http://www.s3for.me/images/s3forme6.png Unbrekable IT (2011): http://www.unbreakableit.com/uit/wp-content/themes/unbreakab...

Your roadmap: http://www.s3for.me/images/s3forme4.png Oblaksoft (Nov 2012): http://www.oblaksoft.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/cloud-ch...

Albeit this following one could be a stock image: Your keyboard: http://www.s3for.me/images/s3forme5.jpg Cloudonlinebusiness (2010): http://www.cloudonlinebusiness.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/0...

Edit: Your TOS is Hetzner's almost verbatim. https://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/legal/agb

justincormack• 13 years ago

the TOS is probably Hetzner's because they are hosting there. The other things on the other hand...

S3ForMe21• 13 years ago

Current design was build by developers, not designers and will be renewed once the professional design is ready. We put all our efforts on backend and storage subsystem development and completely forgot about our temporary public website. Site images were taken from various public stock image services, I hope we didn't violate any rights by using these images.

haldujai3• 13 years ago

Like I asked, can you let me know the stock image services you used? I really like that cloud that Salesforce uses and would love to be able to use it myself.

Also, if you go to http://rest.s3for.me/ (the URL you use to calculate uptime) the error message in the document tree says 'The AWS Access Key Id you provided does not exist in our records'.

You mentioned S3 stands for Storage Should be Simple, what does AWS stand for in your company? Unfortunately cloud software isn't my forte, I would love to know what that acronym stands for.

My naivete leads me to believe that your status check is hosted with Amazon, and that your uptime checker would in fact be checking Amazon's uptime but I am surely mistaken.

mamcx• 13 years ago

Wish to see the API before to even try it.

S3ForMe21• 13 years ago

API is the same as Amazon S3, you can find documentation here: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/API/APIRest.html

0bp• 13 years ago

So, there's no company info at the website at all, why should I trust "unknown" to host my data? Who's liable? Do I know you don't run out of business next week?

S3for.Me – cheap alternative S3 cloud storage

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