Amazon launches European S3
Today Amazon announced they have launched a European version of S3. We’ve already started getting questions from users about whether we will be supporting it. First, it’s important to note that the storage prices for the European backend are 20% higher than the US version. For some users the price/performance trade-off may be worth it, but for European users on home connections that are able to get good transfer rates right now it may not provide much benefit.
Amazon has not yet launched a European version of EC2, which means that current Jungle Disk features including fast file renames and previous versions would not be available. Many of our other upcoming features including block-level file updates, upload resume, and web access also require EC2 and would not be available in Europe until the European version of EC2 launches. For existing Jungle Disk users, Amazon does not currently provide a way to transfer data for free between the US and European versions of EC2 so there would be some cost involved to move your data.
That said, we are planning on offering support for the European backend in the future even if it may mean a reduced feature set for a period of time. We’re certainly interested in your comments on this topic.
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David WoodRedYeti said,
November 6, 2007 @ 3:25 pm
Well since I’m from the UK…
Personally I don’t see that it would help me to have a Europe based S3 service - my upload speed is limited by my own bandwidth constraints not Amazon’s.
What would be very useful, and something I was hoping (wrongly) that this announcement may mean, is billing in the local currency (perhaps via the local Amazon, e.g. Amazon.co.uk) or at least the ability to pay in one large lump (either up front or after say, three months).
That way I’d miss the £1.50 ($3) charge each month that my card makes for a foreign payment.
I realise that this is down to Amazon not Jungle Disk but I mention it since I bet I’m not the only one to have hoped this announcement might have allowed local billing.
I’ve asked Amazon and so far they just said “We take major credit cards” - which I already know of course - not helpful really. I’m waiting on a reply from someone at Amazon who may actually have read my email.
Neil said,
November 6, 2007 @ 3:41 pm
I looked at Jungle Disk for my online backups but was put off by the slow transfer rates reported by European users (I live in the UK.) Hopefully this will solve the problem! Please let me know when you support the European Datacenters. Thanks
Kieren said,
November 6, 2007 @ 4:37 pm
I think the reason that users in Europe are so keen to use European S3 storage is because of data protection issues rather than connection speed.
For example, in the UK, the Data Protection Act (DPA) makes it illegal for us to transfer sensitive personal data to countries without adequate data protection:
http://www.ico.gov.uk/Home/what_we_cover/data_protection/the_basics.aspx
The US is not considered to have an adequate data protection framework and, unless a backup company has signed up to adhere to the principles of the DPA through the “Safe Harbor Scheme” (for example), then the only countries you can store data in are those within the European Economic Area.
This means that US-based S3 storage is simply not something that a lot of European businesses can take advantage of. However, European S3 storage is attractive despite the increased cost.
For this reason I think a lot of users would welcome a European version of Jungle Disk even if it had a reduced feature-set.
Irelandshope said,
November 6, 2007 @ 6:41 pm
Im based in Europe and am not that worried about moving to the European Data Centres. Granted I mostly use JD for backup and I have no problem maxing out my upstream bandwidth with the current US data centres so no advantage there. I have also always had great download speeds from S3 and I expect the speed improvement would be marginal. It may make sense for someone downloading large amounts of data on a regular basis but if your main use is back up then a maxed out connection is a maxed out connection no matter if its US or EU.
My two cents!
Rob Vaughan said,
November 6, 2007 @ 6:44 pm
OK, I was one of the customers who expressed an early enthusiasm for a Euro-option for JD in the forums. BUT I have to say, given the comments in Dave’s blog post above, I would not want to forego all the upcoming new features mentioned. Given the choice between them and the Euro server I’d stick with a slow US server and more features.
Just my penny’s worth…
Rob
engelluk said,
November 6, 2007 @ 7:21 pm
I’m based in Europe and having big performance issues for uploading to the US data center (latency 100ms) this high latency holding me back to fully utilize the jungledisk (approx 130 GB to backup). Therefore i will be great to have a connection to the European data center.
Regards
Lukas
André said,
November 7, 2007 @ 7:11 am
EU laws may give you better protection than US laws.
Ian Sealy said,
November 7, 2007 @ 4:44 pm
One reason I’d be keen to see Jungle Disk support the European backend is that it would (I think, although I need to check the details) allow me to backup personal data that’s subject to the UK’s Data Protection Act. At the moment I can’t use Jungle Disk because the data might end up outside of the European Economic Area. Of course, I’m assuming here that Amazon’s European S3 servers are within the EEA. I don’t suppose you know if they are? (I realise the specific locations are secret.)
Ian Sealy said,
November 8, 2007 @ 4:53 am
According to http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=11256 the European servers are all within the EU, so I’m definitely keen to see Jungle Disk support the European backend ASAP.
Martin said,
November 9, 2007 @ 9:11 am
Yes, since I just start using S3 it would be helpful having a European edition of Jungle Disk. Less features, but allowing to move or create a bucket to/in Europe (due to ‘default’ was probably created in US while configuring Jungle Disk).
Tim Read said,
November 9, 2007 @ 8:02 pm
The issue of jurisdiction could be important with some data, but personally the US based service has been fine and with the Dollar heading south very affordable.
In short as a UK based client I’m not clamouring for connection to a European S3, and probably wouldn’t be an early (if ever ) adopter if it became available.
Jayson said,
November 10, 2007 @ 7:13 am
I would love a European option. In testing transfer rates we are getting a 350% increase in transfer speed to the European data centres vs US.
Hans said,
November 12, 2007 @ 4:15 am
Another most important, yet not mentioned point is data availability in worst case scenarios: I remember that on Sep. 11, 2001 the exploding web traffic made it practically impossible to reach US servers for hours from Germany - while European servers still were. Imagine you needed urgent access to a crucial S3 backup in such a situation…
Even or especially global thinking should include local fallbacks. For this reason I’d go even further and consider a JungleDisk option to mirror S3 data on US *and* European servers. Doubled backup location, doubled price, halved access failure risk!
Nate said,
November 12, 2007 @ 6:11 am
Legally speaking, EU companies are not allowed to use the American S3 to backup their files, since the US privacy laws aren’t as strict as Europe’s.
I will be happy to install JungleDisk once it is compatible with Amazon’s European data center.
Juan said,
November 15, 2007 @ 6:13 am
You are wrong: Amazon.com is a participant in the Safe Harbor program: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&nodeId=468496#harbor
James said,
December 2, 2007 @ 12:58 pm
It would be great to see support for the amazon servers in europe!
eirikso said,
December 21, 2007 @ 6:37 pm
I just did a test on a 100MB file. One from Amazon S3 Europe and one from Amazon S3 US:
100 MB file from EU:
0:01:43 @ 1015 kB/s
100 MB file from US:
0:03:30 @ 503 kB/s
So, 20% more expensive, twice the speed. Here’s the complete thread with tests:
http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/thread.jspa?threadID=18355&tstart=0
eirikso said,
December 21, 2007 @ 6:39 pm
And of course I need to mention that my test was done FROM Oslo, Norway - yeah, you know. That strange small country in the northern part of Europe. At 10:50 PM CET
ADSL2+ 20 mbit, but usually clocking at just above 10 mbit
Lars said,
February 12, 2008 @ 1:58 pm
I would really like Jungle Disk to work with the European servers. I definitely prefer speed over features.
Stefan Seiz said,
February 13, 2008 @ 11:24 am
Yes, i would prefer a EU Bucket too for latency reasons. Typically we have around 8 ms latency within Europe and >100 ms across the Atlantic, so a EU Bucket might well speed things up quite a bit.
Jungle Disk » Blog Archive » Buckets buckets everywhere… said,
February 19, 2008 @ 3:51 pm
[…] Disk 2.0 buckets will also allow us to offer the option of using the European S3 endpoint for European customers while maintaining the ability to easily rename and move files. Jungle Disk […]
David Williams said,
February 20, 2008 @ 6:49 pm
I would also like to lend my voice to adding support for EU S3 buckets. I have access to an extremely high-bandwidth educational service here in Canterbury, and the difference in transfer speeds (using S3Fox) between the EU and US servers is about a factor of ten.
Obviously, this does require the EC2 rollout to happen in the EU as I probably wouldn’t use the service without the advanced features that you mention anyway.
Cheers for a great product, keep it up, and here’s to the EU rollout of EC2
Jungle Dave said,
February 20, 2008 @ 6:58 pm
Please see our latest blog post (at the end) for updated news about EU support:
http://blog.jungledisk.com/2008/02/19/buckets-buckets-everywhere/