Should I persist images on EBS or S3?

Question

I am migrating my Java,Tomcat, Mysql server to AWS EC2.

I have already attached EBS volume for storing MySql data. In my web application people may upload images. So I should persist them. There are 2 alternatives in my mind:

1. Save uploaded images to EBS volume.
2. Use the S3 service.

The followings are my notes, please be skeptic about them, as my expertise is not on servers, but software development.

• EBS plus: S3 storage is more expensive. (0.15 $/Gb > 0.1$/Gb)

• S3 plus: Serving statics from EBS may influence my web server's performance negatively. Is this true? Does Serving images affect server performance notably? For S3 my server will not be responsible for serving statics.

• S3 plus: Serving statics from EBS may result I/O cost, probably it will be minor.

• EBS plus: People say EBS is faster.

• S3 plus: People say S3 is more safe for persistence.

• EBS plus: No need to learn API, it is straight forward to save the images to EBS volume.

Namely I can not decide, will be happy if you guide.

Thanks

Answer 1

The price comparison is not quite right: S3 charges are $0.14 per GB USED, whereas EBS charges are $0.10 per GB PROVISIONED (the size of your EBS volume), whether you use it or not. As a result, S3 may or may not be cheaper than EBS.