Blob Storage

You should almost always use blob storage when your system needs to handle large binary files. This includes any system that involves user-uploaded media, such as:

• Video Sharing Platforms: YouTube, Netflix, Twitch
• File Hosting Services: Dropbox, Google Drive
• Social Media Platforms: Instagram, Facebook, X

Attempting to store large files directly on your application server is a common mistake that can lead to performance bottlenecks and scalability issues.

This is a critical feature for reliably uploading large files. Instead of uploading a file in a single request, the client breaks it into smaller chunks and uploads them in parallel. If any chunk fails, only that chunk needs to be retried, rather than restarting the entire upload. This dramatically improves the reliability and speed of large file uploads, especially over unstable networks. All major blob storage providers offer a multipart upload feature.

Most blob storage providers offer different storage classes, often referred to as "hot" and "cold" storage, to help you optimize costs based on how frequently you access your data.

• Hot Storage: This is for data that is accessed frequently and needs to be available with low latency. It's the most expensive storage tier, but offers the best performance. This is often called the "Standard" tier.
• Cold Storage: This is for data that is accessed infrequently, such as backups or archives. It is much cheaper to store data in this tier, but retrieving it can take longer and may incur additional costs. For example, Amazon S3's "Glacier" is a popular cold storage solution.

Many providers also offer intermediate tiers (like "Infrequent Access") that provide a balance between the cost and performance of hot and cold storage.

Lifecycle policies allow you to automate the management of your objects. You can define rules to automatically transition objects to a cheaper storage class (e.g., from Standard to Infrequent Access after 30 days) or to delete them after a certain period. This is a powerful tool for optimizing storage costs without manual intervention.

A presigned URL provides temporary, secure access to an object to anyone who has the URL, without requiring them to have cloud provider credentials. This is a secure way to allow users to upload or download files directly to/from your storage bucket from their browser, without the files having to pass through your application server.