CODEWITHSUNDEEP
htmlimagespring-mvc
user1241438
user1241438

Reputation: 1543

storing images for my website

I want to setup seperate amazon ec2 instance where i store all my images uploaded via my website by users. I want to be able to show images from this exclusive server. I know how to setup DNS names which would point to this server. But i would like to know how to setup the directories, for example if i refer to an image url as http://images.mydomain.com/images/sample.jpg, then

images.mydomain.com is the server name and

images should be the folder name

now the question is should a webserver be running on this server which is what will serve the images or can i just make images folder public so that it is visible to entire world? How do avoid directory listing?

Pointer to any documentation would be greatly appreciated.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 333

Answers (3)

threejeez
threejeez

Reputation: 2324

I would definitely not implement this as you are planning. You should store all your images in an Amazon S3 bucket and serve them via Amazon's CloudFront CDN. Why go through the hassle of setting up and maintaining an EC2 instance to do what Amazon has already done? S3 provides infinite storage, manages permissions, metadata, etc. CloudFront provides fast access to your images, caching them at edge locations all around the world. Additionally, you can use Amazon Route 53 (or some other DNS service) to point various CNAMEs to your CloudFront distribution.

If you're interested in this approach I'd be happy to provide more info on how to set this up.

Upvotes: 1

Jonathan Eunice
Jonathan Eunice

Reputation: 22443

It certainly is possible to set up a separate EC2 instances to serve your images. You may have good reasons to do that--for example, you may want to authorize only specific users or groups of users to access certain images, in a way that's closely controlled by program logic.

OTOH, if you're just looking to segment the access of image/media files away from the server that provides HTML/web content, you will get much better performance / scalability by moving those files to a service that is specifically tuned for storage and web access. Amazon's S3 (Simple Storage Service) is one relatively straightforward option. Amazon's CloudFront content distribution network (CDN) or a competing CDN would be an even higher performance option.

Using a CDN for file access does add the complexity of configuring the CDN, but if you're going to the trouble of segmenting media access from your primary web server, and if you're expecting any significant I/O load, I've found it to be a high-return-for-effort-expended approach.

Upvotes: 1

inVader
inVader

Reputation: 1534

Yes, you will definitly need to run a webserver on the machine. Otherwise it will not bepossible for clients to connect via http/port 80 and view the images in a browser. This has nothing to do with directory listing enabled. Once you have a webserver running, you can disable directory listing in its configuration.

Install an apache on your server and run it (http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/install.html). You then setup what's called a 'site' in its configuration which is pointing to a local directory which will then be the base directory for your server. It could, for example, be /home/apache on a Unix system. There you create your images folder. If your apache is setup correctly you can then access your images via http://images.mydomain.com/images/sample.jpg.

Upvotes: 0

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