Object store is quickly becoming the new core data substrate. Lets build kafka, but on s3. Lets build github, but on s3. It feels like we going to see more and more "object-store first" systems in the next few years.
I am excited about this future. Give me stateless servers and a storage bucket over having to manage systems with disks any day.
I do wonder if we will see an expansion of the s3 api to support more of these use cases. S3 added a janky file append operation to their new express-one-zone bucket type, and limited to 10k total file append operations. I wonder what else we will get in the next few years.
Definitely agree that every data system that doesn't need <100ms latency is moving to object storage.
> I do wonder if we will see an expansion of the s3 api to support more of these use cases
This is actually an area where I think we have a big leg up on folks building on top of S3. My team (which built K2) sits next to the R2 team, and we have the opportunity to co-evolve the products in mutually beneficial ways.
> every data system that doesn't need <100ms latency is moving to object storage
I think the opportunity extends below 100ms too, particularly given the existence of faster object storage tiers like S3 express or more recently GCS rapid bucket (both only offering single-zone durability, so still need to do quorum writes to get region-level durability as with standard tiers).
One of the tensions of course is how long to linger before flushing to object storage - you have to trade off directly between latency and cost of your API ops for PUTs.
When building the serverless offering of s2.dev (which is in a similar space, full disclosure!), we designed around stateful backend processes capable of constantly flushing multi-tenant objects (i.e., containing records from many streams), allowing streams to offer low ack latencies (~50ms p99 from same region) without blowing up the unit economics.
From my experience benchmarking S3 express, it is is faster, but not fast enough yet for many use cases.
An obvious disclaimer is that the word "enough" here is carrying quite the weight: I expect it to get better, and each has their own requirements. Do benchmark yourself and don't make expensive decision based on an HN comment.
psanford · · focus · HN ↗
I am excited about this future. Give me stateless servers and a storage bucket over having to manage systems with disks any day.
I do wonder if we will see an expansion of the s3 api to support more of these use cases. S3 added a janky file append operation to their new express-one-zone bucket type, and limited to 10k total file append operations. I wonder what else we will get in the next few years.
necubi · · focus · HN ↗
> I do wonder if we will see an expansion of the s3 api to support more of these use cases
This is actually an area where I think we have a big leg up on folks building on top of S3. My team (which built K2) sits next to the R2 team, and we have the opportunity to co-evolve the products in mutually beneficial ways.
sensodine · · focus · HN ↗
I think the opportunity extends below 100ms too, particularly given the existence of faster object storage tiers like S3 express or more recently GCS rapid bucket (both only offering single-zone durability, so still need to do quorum writes to get region-level durability as with standard tiers).
One of the tensions of course is how long to linger before flushing to object storage - you have to trade off directly between latency and cost of your API ops for PUTs.
When building the serverless offering of s2.dev (which is in a similar space, full disclosure!), we designed around stateful backend processes capable of constantly flushing multi-tenant objects (i.e., containing records from many streams), allowing streams to offer low ack latencies (~50ms p99 from same region) without blowing up the unit economics.
Congrats on the launch btw!
shye · · focus · HN ↗
An obvious disclaimer is that the word "enough" here is carrying quite the weight: I expect it to get better, and each has their own requirements. Do benchmark yourself and don't make expensive decision based on an HN comment.