Building and operating a pretty big storage system called S3 (2023)

Today, I am publishing a guest post from Andy Warfield, VP and distinguished engineer over at S3. I asked him to write this based on the Keynote address he gave at USENIX FAST ‘23 that covers three distinct perspectives on scale that come along with building and operating a storage system the size of S3. In today’s world of short-form snackable content, we’re very fortunate to get an excellent in-depth exposé. It’s one that I find particularly fascinating, and it provides some really unique insights into why people like Andy and I joined Amazon in the first place. The full recording of Andy presenting this paper at fast is embedded at the end of this post. –W Building and operating a pretty big storage system called S3 I’ve worked in computer systems software — operating systems, virtualization, storage, networks, and security — for my entire career. However, the last six years working with Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) have forced me to think about systems in broader terms t ... Read full article.