[francoismassot]

We tested S3 Express for our search engine quickwit [0] a couple of weeks ago.

While this was really satisfying on the performance side, we were a bit disappointed by the price, and I mostly agree with the article on this matter.

I can see some very specific use cases where the pricing should be OK but currently, I would say most of our users will just stay on the classic S3 and add some local SSD caching if they have a lot of requests.

[0] https://github.com/quickwit-oss/quickwit/

[kernelsanderz]

I'd be fascinated if you could share your insights from using this. Where does the pricing fall down? And is the latency/throughput a big improvement for this use case? (ie. externalizing a search index).

[fulmicoton]

I ran the benchmark at Quickwit. I confirm it works as intended. I was extremely excited about this feature, primarily interested in the decreased GET request cost, and secondly the lower latency.

Unfortunately the price model puts it in a place where it is the right technology only for some very rare places.

In a nutshell the key thing you need to know is: - The storage is 6.4x expensive than classic S3. - The GET requests are 2x cheaper (with additional cost for large requests). - Your data is replicated within a single region. - latency is single digit ms.

From a pure cost wise point of view, the realm where it makes sense to use it is there, but small, and often competes more with EBS than it competes with S3.

[kernelsanderz]

thank so much for sharing. Amazing product BTW!

[Hixon10]

Did you have access to their private preview version, or it is some another S3 Express, not S3 Express One Zone?