Hi all,
I'm hoping someone out there has experience setting up an account with S3 and would be willing to answer a couple questions for me.

I have a client who has many recorded webinars & teleconferences that she needs to get to her list for free. She could do this with her current ejunkie account but the costs to have enough storage space are crazy (some of these downloads are 1gb or more!)

I mentioned S3 and she loves the idea but we are at a standstill on what exactly we need to know before signing up. I told her she should just call them but, when it comes to the set-up, etc. it's going to fall on me to do or find a sub who can do it.

Anyone HELP!

~C

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~Christina|BD Mag|VOSTeam

Hi Christina there's some great documentation here - scroll down and you'll find a Getting Started Guide, Developer Guide, etc.

The site lists Required Knowledge and Skills
XML, Basic understanding of web services, A programming language for consuming a web service and any related tools, You should also have read the Amazon S3 Getting Started Guide.


Is there anything specific you are wondering about?

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At the moment she is confused by the pricing calculator(she is doing as much as she can on her own to keep costs down)-
it states:

Amazon EBS Volumes:

Elastic IP:
Number of Elastic IPs:
Elastic IP Non-attached Time:
Number of Elastic IP Remaps:
Amazon EC2 Bandwidth:
Data Transfer In:
Data Transfer Out:
Regional Data Transfer:
Public IP/Elastic IP Data Transfer:
Elastic Load Balancing:
Number of Elastic LBs:
Total Data Processed by all ELBs:

What is all that and how do we figure out her approximate costs?

~C

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~Christina|BD Mag|VOSTeam

Those fields are for the Ec2 calculator.
She needs to choose the tab below that one (on the left) for S3 (pictured below).

For any field that she needs clarification on, she can mouse over the field itself for a tool tip. If she needs more info each item is discussed in detail in the documentation (unless your client is technically inclined and/or can program I'm not sure it's going to be all that cost effective for her to muddle through it herself ...)

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BTW, if there's anything else you need deciphered, let me know!

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Thanks Tess!

I have to admit it's a bit "greek" to me as well at this point but I haven't hopped in to check it out and read anything yet. Client is out of the country right now so her Assistant is teh one trying to get things sorted out so a decision can be made.

They basically do whatever I tell them (love those types of clients) so I'll have to make some time to really go through the doc's. Any other alternatives you can think of?

She doesn't want an actual membership site as these downloads are teleclasses/webinars that are paid for and this is the replays purchasers were promised. No need to have purchasers set up an account on her site.

Thanks,
~C

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~Christina|BD Mag|VOSTeam

Hmmm, is there a reason you can't just keep them up on a regular domain somewhere "in the back", or is it the sheer size and amount of files you're worried about?

S3 can get *very* expensive if there's much bandwidth and for any of the alternatives I'm aware of (for example http://www.cachefly.com/plans.html) you're going to get dinged heavily for storage (especially if your files are averaging 1gb)

I'd suggest that the cheapest/fastest way would be to set something up on her own domain somewhere, break up the really big audios into chapters, and let people download them there. Unless she's anticipating huge amounts of traffic and high download volumes consistently I don't know that S3 is a great choice.

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Here's the problem:
We do currently store a bunch of her files on her hosting account. 90% of the time when uploading through ftp (and I've tried several different ones and 3 different computers) the uploads break. So the final file, although it shows as all being uploaded, sometimes isn't complete. We also don't know this until one of us has the time to sit and listen to the whole audio file to make sure it's all there.
I suppose the best bet would be to keep looking for a way to get them uploaded to her host without breaking (we have highest upload time limit allowed which should be more than enough for each file)

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~Christina|BD Mag|VOSTeam

What is the filetype you're uploading? What about converting to something smaller (mp3 maybe?), break them into two or more pieces, or compress them?

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They are mp3/mp4's and some pdf worksheets to go with.

I've always zipped them- never split into pieces although should be fairly easy with audacity I assume.

I can't figure out what is causing the breakage on upload- Have tried different settings with different ftp software- wifi and direct connect.
I just have this feeling it's something on my end (client is not tech savvy so asking her to try on her end isn't possible)

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~Christina|BD Mag|VOSTeam