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  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Infrastructure as a Service
  4. Cloud Storage
  5. Amazon EBS vs Amazon S3 vs Minio

Amazon EBS vs Amazon S3 vs Minio

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Amazon S3
Amazon S3
Stacks55.1K
Followers40.2K
Votes2.0K
Amazon EBS
Amazon EBS
Stacks650
Followers542
Votes82
Minio
Minio
Stacks637
Followers670
Votes43
GitHub Stars57.8K
Forks6.4K

Amazon EBS vs Amazon S3 vs Minio: What are the differences?

Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers various storage solutions such as Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS), Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), and Minio. Each of these services has its own unique features and capabilities. In this comparison, we will explore the key differences between Amazon EBS, Amazon S3, and Minio.
  1. Accessibility: Amazon EBS provides block-level storage volumes that are inherently tied to a specific EC2 instance, making them accessible only from that instance. In contrast, Amazon S3 and Minio offer object storage, which can be accessed from anywhere on the internet using a unique URL. This difference in accessibility makes Amazon EBS suitable for instances requiring direct attached storage, while Amazon S3 and Minio are better suited for storing and sharing data across multiple instances or applications.

  2. Durability and Redundancy: Amazon EBS volumes are replicated within the same Availability Zone for durability but do not provide cross-AZ redundancy. On the other hand, Amazon S3 is designed to provide 99.999999999% (11 9s) durability by automatically replicating data across multiple facilities within a region. Similarly, Minio can be configured for distributed, highly available object storage, ensuring data redundancy and durability across multiple servers.

  3. Cost Structure: Amazon EBS storage is typically charged based on the provisioned capacity and I/O operations, making it more suitable for applications with specific performance requirements. Amazon S3 and Minio, on the other hand, follow a pay-as-you-go model based on the amount of data stored, making them more cost-effective for long-term archival or data sharing scenarios.

  4. Performance: Amazon EBS volumes offer low-latency, high-throughput storage for applications that require consistent performance. Amazon S3 and Minio, being object storage solutions, may have slightly higher latency but are optimized for large-scale storage and retrieval of unstructured data such as media files, backups, and logs.

  5. Data Lifecycle Management: Amazon S3 provides features like lifecycle policies to automatically transition data between storage classes based on access patterns, optimizing costs for infrequently accessed data. Minio, as an open-source object storage solution, allows users to customize data lifecycle management based on their specific requirements, offering flexibility in data storage and retrieval strategies.

  6. Integration with Ecosystem: Amazon EBS is tightly integrated with EC2 instances and is well-suited for applications that require direct access to block storage. Amazon S3, being a versatile storage service, integrates seamlessly with various AWS services such as Lambda, Glacier, and Athena, facilitating data processing and analytics workflows. Minio, being compatible with the S3 API, can be integrated with a wide range of applications and tools that support S3-compatible storage, enabling easy migration and interoperability with existing systems.

In Summary, the key differences between Amazon EBS, Amazon S3, and Minio lie in their accessibility, durability, cost structure, performance, data lifecycle management, and integration with the ecosystem, catering to different storage needs and use cases in the cloud environment.

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Advice on Amazon S3, Amazon EBS, Minio

Mohammad
Mohammad

Aug 30, 2020

Needs adviceonBackblaze B2 Cloud StorageBackblaze B2 Cloud StoragePHPPHPLaravelLaravel

Hello! I have a mobile app with nearly 100k MAU, and I want to add a cloud file storage service to my app.

My app will allow users to store their image, video, and audio files and retrieve them to their device when necessary.

I have already decided to use PHP & Laravel as my backend, and I use Contabo VPS. Now, I need an object storage service for my app, and my options are:

  • Amazon S3 : It sounds to me like the best option but the most expensive. Closest to my users (MENA Region) for other services, I will have to go to Europe. Not sure how important this is?

  • DigitalOcean Spaces : Seems like my best option for price/service, but I am still not sure

  • Wasabi: the best price (6 USD/MONTH/TB) and free bandwidth, but I am not sure if it fits my needs as I want to allow my users to preview audio and video files. They don't recommend their service for streaming videos.

  • Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage: Good price but not sure about them.

  • There is also the self-hosted s3 compatible option, but I am not sure about that.

Any thoughts will be helpful. Also, if you think I should post in a different sub, please tell me.

180k views180k
Comments
Dalton
Dalton

Oct 23, 2020

Decided

Minio is a free and open source object storage system. It can be self-hosted and is S3 compatible. During the early stage it would save cost and allow us to move to a different object storage when we scale up. It is also fast and easy to set up. This is very useful during development since it can be run on localhost.

143k views143k
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 S3
Amazon S3
Amazon EBS
Amazon EBS
Minio
Minio

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

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.

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

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.
Amazon EBS allows you to create storage volumes from 1 GB to 1 TB that can be mounted as devices by Amazon EC2 instances. Multiple volumes can be mounted to the same instance.;Amazon EBS enables you to provision a specific level of I/O performance if desired, by choosing a Provisioned IOPS volume. This allows you to predictably scale to thousands of IOPS per Amazon EC2 instance.;Storage volumes behave like raw, unformatted block devices, with user supplied device names and a block device interface. You can create a file system on top of Amazon EBS volumes, or use them in any other way you would use a block device (like a hard drive).;Amazon EBS volumes are placed in a specific Availability Zone, and can then be attached to instances also in that same Availability Zone.;Each storage volume is automatically replicated within the same Availability Zone. This prevents data loss due to failure of any single hardware component.;Amazon EBS also provides the ability to create point-in-time snapshots of volumes, which are persisted to Amazon S3. These snapshots can be used as the starting point for new Amazon EBS volumes, and protect data for long-term durability. The same snapshot can be used to instantiate as many volumes as you wish. These snapshots can be copied across AWS regions, making it easier to leverage multiple AWS regions for geographical expansion, data center migration and disaster recovery.;AWS also enables you to create new volumes from AWS hosted public data sets.;Amazon CloudWatch exposes performance metrics for EBS volumes, giving you insight into bandwidth, throughput, latency, and queue depth. The metrics are accessible via the AWS CloudWatch API or the AWS Management Console. For more details, see Amazon CloudWatch.
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Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
57.8K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
6.4K
Stacks
55.1K
Stacks
650
Stacks
637
Followers
40.2K
Followers
542
Followers
670
Votes
2.0K
Votes
82
Votes
43
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 590
    Reliable
  • 492
    Scalable
  • 456
    Cheap
  • 329
    Simple & easy
  • 83
    Many sdks
Cons
  • 7
    Permissions take some time to get right
  • 6
    Requires a credit card
  • 6
    Takes time/work to organize buckets & folders properly
  • 3
    Complex to set up
Pros
  • 36
    Point-in-time snapshots
  • 27
    Data reliability
  • 19
    Configurable i/o performance
Pros
  • 10
    Store and Serve Resumes & Job Description PDF, Backups
  • 8
    S3 Compatible
  • 4
    Simple
  • 4
    Open Source
  • 3
    Encryption and Tamper-Proof
Cons
  • 3
    Deletion of huge buckets is not possible

What are some alternatives to Amazon S3, Amazon EBS, Minio?

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.

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.

Rackspace Cloud Files

Rackspace Cloud Files

Cloud Files, powered by OpenStack®, provides an easy to use online storage for files and media which can be delivered globally at blazing speeds over Akamai's content delivery network (CDN).

Storj

Storj

It is an open source, decentralized file storage solution. It uses encryption, file sharing, and a blockchain-based hash table to store files on a peer-to-peer network. The goal is to make cloud file storage faster, cheaper, and private.

RunAbove

RunAbove

We give you full access to the OpenStack API, which our compute (Nova) and storage (Swift) solutions are based on. This means no provider lock-in and easy automation of all your deployments. You can also manage your account and billing details via our RESTful API. You can choose between Horizon or OVH's easy-to-use web panel.

DigitalOcean Spaces

DigitalOcean Spaces

DigitalOcean Spaces are designed to make it easy and cost effective to store and serve massive amounts of data. Spaces are ideal for storing static, unstructured data like audio, video, and images as well as large amounts of text.

Rook

Rook

It is an open source cloud-native storage orchestrator for Kubernetes, providing the platform, framework, and support for a diverse set of storage solutions to natively integrate with cloud-native environments.

DigitalOcean Block Storage

DigitalOcean Block Storage

Add more storage space, mix and match compute and storage to suit your database, file storage, application, service, mobile, and backup needs.

Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage

Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage

It is a generic cloud storage. You can use it from any computer, any operating system or any cloud storage purpose. You can manage and store large amounts of media files using this service

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