I'm a big fan of Amazon Web Services (AWS). I use Amazon S3 to backup my websites every day and have used the CloudFront as an inexpensive CDN for image hosting. Lots of individuals and businesses also use S3 as a cloud-based backup too, using Jungle Disk, S3Fox, and other utilities to transfer files directly to S3.

But what happens if you have A LOT of data to transfer. Like hundreds of gigabytes, or multiple terabytes? If you want to take advantage of the various AWS services -- say you want to backup all of your home movies for double-security/potential global access or your business has a few terrabytes of data it would like to incoporate with an EC2 application -- how long is it going to take to actually transfer that much data? It almost seems like it would be faster to just ship Amazon a hard drive and let them transfer everything. Which is exacty what Amazon is proposing you do with its new AWS Import/Export service.

The service, which is in limited beta (you can apply now) and currently only uploads to US-based S3 buckets for now, works like this:

• Fill out an electronic form detailing your S3 bucket info, AWS password and a shipping address
• Attach some signed digital files to your external device
• Mail your external hard drive, with all required power adaptors and connection cables to Amazon.

Once the drive is received, the data will be transferred to your AWS account (the type of drive you send can impact the data transfer speed, for instance, eSATA will be faster than USB) and the drive will be mailed back to you.

The price? $80 per device, plus $2.50 for each hour of transfer required. Right now, the service only supports sending data to Amazon, but in the future, Amazon will support sending external drives with large amounts of data back to customers, similar to what Backblaze offers its customers as a recovery solution.

Amazon has a great pricing calculator so you can work out how expensive a large transfer might be as compared to standard S3 upload bandwidth costs (which are not charged for AWS Import/Export transfers) and the detaild description section of the AWS Import/Export page lists the transfer time for uploading 1 TB of data at various connection rates.

If you have lots of data you would like to host on Amazon's secure cloud, AWS Import/Export might just be the right tool for the job!

If you're a subscriber to Amazon's Web Services then you know how important it is to make sure your data is not only safe but accessible at all times. And while Amazon provides a site dedicated to advising you of the status of their network, what if you wanted to know if the issue was with a particular service or if the sky was indeed falling.

CloudStatus hopes to provide just that. Instead of just globally monitoring Amazon's services, CloudStatus deploys their Hyperic HQ agents inside and outside Amazon's clouds to help determine if the slow down you may be experiencing is due to the entire infrastructure going down or just to a particular service.

In addition, CloudStatus also provides matrices so you can see how each of Amazon's services have performed over time. This is particular useful to those that are considering making the jump to cloud computing and want to base their decision off empirical data instead of marketing propaganda.

A while back, we asked for reader feedback for off-site backup solutions. Unsurprisingly, many of you said you used Jungle Disk which is a disk-based utility that allows for easy backup to Amazon's S3 storage platform. S3 is inexpensive, efficient and Amazon's servers are fast, which makes it a great tool to use for either server or local drive backups. However, if you don't want to stare at the command line or grapple with a web interface, especially for automated backups, Jungle Disk is a tremendous time savor.

Today, Jungle Disk released version 2.0 of their software for Windows, Mac and Linux. You can read the release notes, but here are some highlights:

• Brand new interface that makes setting up the service easier than ever and a very intuitive back-up selection utility
• Support for Jungle Disk 2.0 buckets and compatibility buckets
• Support for European S3 buckets
• Support for multiple backups and independent scheduling
• Previous versions feature
• Improved performance

Zmanda has been in business since 2005 and specialized in centralized enterprise backup with clients that work on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X and up until this point offered backup to disk and tape. Their new agreement with Amazon's S3 shows S3's influence in the off-site backup market. Amazon S3 offers very inexpensive, secure storage for individuals, developers, and companies.

To get started using Zmanda, visit their website and download the client appropriate for your computer. Also check out their press release for more information about the partnership with Amazon.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos gave the keynote at the Web 2.0 Expo, outlining some next-gen focus of Amazons suite of Web Services.

So whats in store for the shopping portal? Bezos and his team are pushing hard on the family of Amazon Web Service API's that includes the S3 storage API, EC2 computer services and the Simple Queue Service. Bezos also mentioned that Amazon is working on other API's in the web infrastructure stack.

Amazon's Simple Storage solution has become a highly touted cost conscious alternative for companies to manage online e-commerce services, and currently holds 5 billion objects in S3, up from 800 million in July 2006. However, Amazon currently isn't making money on this venture, but sees it as a future money making opportunity. S3 currently has 90 million requests per day, and 16 thousand requests per second.

Some companies which have been taking advantage of Amazon's S3 service are S3AjaxWiki, JungleDisk, and iminlikewithyou. Also, dont forget about using A3 to back up your Flickr photos.

[via programmableweb]

Amazon recently released its fourth quarter results, and the fact that developers joining Amazon's web services grows over 55% each year struck struck Larry Dignan. I didn't think that this many developers were into this feature as I haven't heard too much about apps that have been created. We wrote about wrote about Amazons S3 service when it launched in March 2005. The service allows developers to use Amazon's data storage and transfer capabilities for free. There are monthly fees, however, for storing and transferring data, and it can only be accessed by API's. What can you use S3 for? DLS covered S3AjaxWiki, a wiki solely existing on the S3 service. We also gave props to a Python script creator who developed a way to back up Flickr photos.

If you want to add your name to the growing list of developers, or just check out some of the other neat applications people have created with the Amazon Web Services, there are tons of tutorials, tools and code samples. If you have anything to share, or if DLS readers have hooked up with the S3 service to create something interesting, please show off your skills in the comments.

Amazon S3, the online storage service from the mega-retailer, has been on my radar for a couple of months, but unless I'm mistaken, JungleDisk is the first desktop-based (rather than web-based) app that takes advantage of the service. Basically, JungleDisk integrates S3 storage with Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux allowing you to manage files stored on the service as though they were ordinary files on a regular hard drive. JungleDisk's intended use is for backing up important files and transferring files between computers, and the web site has a handy calculator for figuring out the cost depending on your use. Want 20GB of storage and 2GB transfer? $3.40/mo. Want 500MB of storage and 2GB transfer? $0.48/mo. Apart from Amazon's fees, JungleDisk itself is free.

Uber-hacker and blogger Les Orchard saw the potential of Amazon S3 early on and realized that even though it's not intended to be a consumer-facing service, with a little JavaScript and ingenuity it can be used to host entire web applications. To that end he create S3AjaxWiki, a very slick proof-of-concept wiki that exists solely on S3, no external sever required. For more information, take a look at Orchard's blog, where he's chronicling the project's progress.

People are slowly but surely figuring out what S3, Amazon's new "Simple Storage Service," is good for. Blogger and developer Matt Croydon has written a quick (25 lines!) Python script that automatically backs up his photos from Flickr to S3. Cool. "After uploading 160 or so photos to Amazon, Croydon writes, "I owe them about a penny." I think that putting raw resources like storage, bandwidth, and infrastructure behind a professional-grade API for bargain-basement prices as Amazon has done is brilliant, and is going to spawn a lot of fascinating projects in the near future.

Amazon S3 (which stands for "Simple Storage Service") is a new web service that basically extends Amazon's huge data storage and transfer capabilities to web developers at large for a fee. "Amazon S3 enables any developer to leverage Amazon’s own benefits of massive scale with no up-front investment or performance compromises," goes the press release. Storing data with S3 costs $0.15 per gigabyte per month and $0.20 for each gigabyte transferred. The service is intended for web developers only, meaning it can be accessed with common APIs but not directly by end users, but files of any type up to 5GB may be stored and each file has a unique URL. It even has a built-in BitTorrent interface. It looks great for developers that have big ideas (and big data) but don't have the resources to build a big infrastructure themselves.

[Via TechCrunch]