Help Needed: AWS S3 Cost Calculator for Video Timeline Storage
Background
I've just finished a consultation call with Amazon regarding S3 storage for our UNA CMS video timeline system. They've directed me to the AWS Pricing Calculator, but I need the community's expertise to ensure I'm calculating this correctly.
Calculator Link:
What We Know So Far
- Service Required: S3 Standard storage
- Region: Europe (London) / EU-West-2
- Use Case: Storing and delivering video timelines to users
- Free Tier Available: 5GB storage, 20K GET requests, 2K PUT requests monthly
Key Questions I Need Help With
1. Data Transfer Per Timeline Pull
When a user pulls/loads a timeline in UNA CMS:
- How much data is typically transferred?
- Does this include video files, thumbnails, metadata, or all combined?
- Are videos streamed or downloaded in full?
- What's the average timeline size in your experience?
2. Monthly Data Transfer Estimates
For calculating the AWS costs accurately:
- How should I estimate total monthly data transfer?
- What's the typical ratio of uploads (PUT) vs downloads (GET)?
- How many timeline pulls should I expect per active user per month?
3. Calculator Configuration
When using the AWS calculator for S3 Standard (London region), what values should I input for:
- Storage amount (GB): How much video storage per user/timeline?
- PUT requests: Upload frequency?
- GET requests: Download/view frequency?
- Data Transfer OUT: This seems to be the biggest cost factor - how do you calculate this?
What I'm Looking For
From the community:
- Real-world usage patterns from existing UNA video timeline implementations
- Typical storage and bandwidth consumption metrics
- Best practices for estimating AWS costs for video delivery
- Any tips on reducing data transfer costs (CDN, optimization, etc.)
Specific Help:
- Walk me through the calculator with realistic numbers for a small-to-medium UNA community
- Should I be considering alternatives like Cloudflare R2 (zero egress fees) or DigitalOcean Spaces?
Additional Context
I'm particularly concerned about data transfer OUT costs, as the AWS rep mentioned this is typically the largest expense when users frequently pull/view timelines.
Any insights, formulas, or real-world examples would be incredibly helpful!
Thanks in advance! 🙏
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Hello @Chris Andre Buys !
We have the old but still good post about similar subject https://unacms.com/p/estimating-server-load-and-hardware
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Perfect !!! Damn and thanks @Leonid S
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Please respond a.s.a.p and help me understand repost a bit better since it is one of the event types. From my timeline count, I've decided to delete the recent 10 posts but when done, the script indeed deleted ten, but when I look at the timeline... different story...
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Found it... the curled arrow next to the 1 colored in blue. You'll find it in view-post. But it is as straight forward as creating another timeline entry. So, back to square one.
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@unateam @LeonidS @Michael Newton @Clubhouse
Successfully tested the timeline cleanup script using deleteEvent() on our dev environment - works perfectly.
Next test: Production site has symlinked storage:
/public_html/storage → /mnt/shared_storage/media
Question: Does UNA's native BxDolStorage deletion follow symlinks and remove files from the actual target location, or only from the symlink path?
Need confirmation before testing on production.