Object storage for a web application

Question

I am currently working on a website where, roughly 40 million documents and images should be served to it\'s users. I need suggestions on which method is the most suitable f

Answer 1

One probably-relevant question, whose answer I do not readily see in your post, is this:

• How often do users actually "modify" the content?

and:

• When and if they do, how painful is it if a particular user is served "stale" content?

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Personally (and, "categorically speaking"), I prefer to tackle such problems in two stages: (1) identifying the objects to be stored – e.g. using a database as an index; and (2) actually storing them, this being a task that I wish to delegate to "a true file-system, which after all specializes in such things."

A database (it "offhand" seems to me ...) would be a very good way to handle the logical ("as seen by the user") taxonomy of the things which you wish to store, while a distributed filesystem could handle the physical realities of storing the data and actually getting it to where it needs to go, and your application would be in the perfect position to gloss-over all of those messy filesystem details . . .