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Unity WebPlayer Content over Amazon S3 + Cloudfront

In the wake of big plans, I’ve been looking into low-cost ways of digitally distributing large amounts of data to lots of people. Here’s what I’ve set up so far:

Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is a place where you can cheaply put large files for download – You currently pay $0.15/GB for storage and $0.17/GB for outbound transfer.
An example: You have a 20MB game and 1000 people a day play it: 20*1.000*30 = 600.000MB traffic per month = 586 GB * $0.17 per GB transfer + $0.15 for 1 GB of storage = ca. $100 per month

Amazon Cloudfront makes sure the content is delivered to the end-user with low latency. Your data will be delivered form the closest of currently 8 locations in the US, 4 in Europe and 2 in Asia. It’s also supposed to scale really well, so you should be immune to the famous slashdot-effect (the content will be immune, if the website that links to it goes down you’re still f*****)
The cost here will be slightly higher, but not substantially: Running the example given above through Cloudfront should amount to about $110.
Both of these Services are part of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) and if you already have an account at Amazon (and who doesn’t) it’s super-simple to sign up.
  • Once signed up to S3 and Cloudfront, get the S3Fox Firefox plugin and log in with your access key and secret key.
  • Create a new bucket (=directory) and upload your file to it.
  • Change Permissions (Edit ACL) and allow Everyone to Read.
  • At this stage you could already access your file through normal S3, but we want to get it through Cloudfront, so:
  • Manage Distributions on the bucket – Create Distribution. Once it is deployed you’ll see a Resource URL, copy it – this is the link to the directory. (If you go to Manage Distributions on the file it will show you the complete URL to the file.)
  • Put the link up on your webpage, you should be able to get your file on S3 through Cloudfront now.
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One Comment

    andy on September 29, 2009 at 18:23 | Permalink

    I always enjoy learning how other people employ Amazon S3 online storage. I am wondering if you can check out my very own tool CloudBerry Explorer that helps to manage S3 on Windows . It is a freeware. With CloudBerry Explorer PRO you can even connect to FTP accounts

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