Title

AWS re:Invent 2022 - Shutterstock’s Cloud Storage Revolution with Amazon S3 (STG003)

Summary

Jefferson Fraser, Director of Edge Compute and Delivery at Shutterstock, discusses the company's transition to AWS and the cost savings achieved through Amazon S3 Intelligent Tiering.
Shutterstock, a global creative platform, has a vast array of content and a multi-petabyte data lake, growing from 4 petabytes in 2015 to over 16 petabytes of customer content and 40 petabytes in their data lake.
The company faced challenges with hardware upkeep costs and the need to double storage capacity, leading to the migration to AWS and the use of Amazon S3 for object storage.
Engineers previously maintaining hardware were able to shift focus to core business challenges, leveraging AWS services like CloudFront and Lambda at Edge.
Shutterstock adopted Amazon S3 Intelligent Tiering for storage optimization and cost management, moving over 40 petabytes of data into this service.
A 53% reduction in S3 costs was realized between March and July 2022, with no impact on customer latency, even during high-velocity usage and data-intensive AI/ML model training.
Future plans include further disassembling of legacy proxy patterns, moving applications closer to S3 access points, and using software libraries or CDK constructs for standardized infrastructure practices.
Fraser provides tips for adopting Amazon S3 Intelligent Tiering, such as being aware of object size, using S3 Storage Lens for insights, maintaining object metadata, and not being afraid of opt-in tiers.

The transition to Amazon S3 allowed Shutterstock to significantly reduce the time engineers spent on maintenance, from 20-50%, enabling them to focus on value-adding activities.
The Strangler Fig pattern, as described by Martin Fowler, was effectively used by Shutterstock to manage the migration of their monolithic systems to AWS services.
Amazon S3 Intelligent Tiering's minimum object size of 128 kilobytes was well-suited to Shutterstock's average object size of 2 megabytes, indicating that the service is appropriate for companies with similar or larger object sizes.
The sustained cost savings during periods of high data usage and growth demonstrate the efficiency of S3 Intelligent Tiering in handling dynamic access patterns without compromising performance.
Fraser's tips highlight the importance of understanding storage consumption patterns and metadata management for successful implementation of S3 Intelligent Tiering, suggesting that these considerations are critical for any company looking to optimize cloud storage costs.
The case study of Shutterstock's use of AWS services underscores the potential for significant cost savings and operational efficiencies that can be achieved by leveraging cloud storage solutions and highlights the importance of strategic planning and understanding of cloud services for businesses undergoing digital transformation.