RFC: Scalable S3 Bucket for Slopopedia Blog Post Hosting

[colburncodes]

1. Introduction

This Request for Comment (RFC) outlines the design and implementation proposal for creating a highly scalable Amazon S3 bucket infrastructure to host the company's blog posts. The objective is to develop an architecture that can accommodate the growth of content similar to the scale of Rotten Tomatoes, ensuring efficient storage, retrieval, and delivery of blog posts to users.

2. Background

As the company's online presence and content production grow, the existing blog hosting infrastructure is becoming inadequate to handle the increasing demand. To address this challenge, a scalable solution based on Amazon S3, a highly reliable and durable object storage service, is proposed.

3. Goals

The primary goals of this RFC are as follows:

Scalability: The S3 bucket architecture must support rapid scaling to handle a large volume of blog posts and associated media files.

Performance: The solution should ensure quick retrieval and delivery of blog content to users with minimal latency.

Reliability: The S3 setup must provide high availability and durability to prevent data loss and service disruptions.

Cost-Efficiency: The architecture should optimize costs by utilizing S3 features like storage classes and lifecycle policies effectively.

Security: Implement robust security measures to protect the integrity and confidentiality of the blog content.

4. Proposed Architecture

The proposed architecture for the scalable S3 bucket involves the following components and strategies:

Bucket Organization: Organize the S3 bucket structure to include separate folders for each blog post, with unique identifiers for easy retrieval. Example: s3://blog-company-name/posts/post-id.

Content Distribution: Implement Amazon CloudFront as a content delivery network (CDN) to cache and serve blog content from edge locations globally, reducing latency.

Data Partitioning: Utilize Amazon S3's partitioning capabilities to distribute data across multiple partitions, enabling efficient retrieval and load distribution.

Multi-Region Replication: Implement cross-region replication to ensure data availability in case of a regional outage. This enhances the reliability of the system.

Lifecycle Policies: Configure lifecycle policies to automatically transition older blog posts to cost-effective storage classes, reducing storage costs while retaining accessibility.

Access Control: Apply fine-grained access control using IAM roles and policies to ensure only authorized users and services can interact with the S3 bucket.

Monitoring and Logging: Set up Amazon CloudWatch and AWS CloudTrail to monitor bucket activity, track usage patterns, and respond to security events promptly.

5. Implementation Steps

Bucket Creation: Create an S3 bucket using AWS Management Console, AWS CLI, or SDKs.

Folder Structure: Design a clear and organized folder structure for blog post storage within the bucket.

Content Upload: Develop an automated process for uploading new blog posts and associated media to the appropriate folders.

CloudFront Integration: Configure CloudFront to distribute content, improving delivery speed.

Replication Configuration: Set up cross-region replication to enhance data redundancy.

Lifecycle Policy: Define and apply lifecycle policies to transition old blog posts to cost-effective storage classes.

Access Control: Establish IAM roles, policies, and ACLs to control access to the bucket and its contents.

Monitoring and Alerts: Configure CloudWatch to monitor bucket metrics and set up alerts for potential issues.

6. Conclusion

This RFC proposes a scalable Amazon S3 bucket architecture to host the company's blog posts, with a focus on scalability, performance, reliability, cost-efficiency, and security. By implementing this solution, the company aims to accommodate growth and ensure a seamless user experience similar to the scale of platforms like Rotten Tomatoes. Feedback and suggestions from stakeholders are welcome before proceeding with implementation.

[colburncodes]

Confirmed with Becca about having a photo field and she stated that it would be nice to have available in the future.

[propitive]

What are the alternatives to an Amazon S3 Bucket Infrastructure?

[colburncodes]

@propitive An alternative would be https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/storage/ or Azure Blob Storage

[jahorwitz]

Let's use S3 for this since I'm planning to set up our frontend deployment on S3 as well. I created a ticket for myself to provision the resources in AWS and set up our deployments-- I'll update in our stand-up call on progress 👍

For the above proposal, I think it makes sense to use S3 for hosting any image uploads using keystone image storage with S3; I did this recently and it works quite well. The actual blog posts themselves should live in our MySQL database though, which is separate from S3.