Screaming in the Cloud
Screaming in the Cloud
Corey Quinn
S3 and the Evolution of Storage with Andy Warfield
36 minutes Posted Feb 4, 2025 at 11:00 am.
Andy Warfield joins Corey in this episode to discuss the evolution of storage technology at Amazon. This includes the evolution of S3 from archival storage to supporting modern AI and analytics. As Vice President and Distinguished Engineer at AWS, Andy is able to explain performance-enhancing innovations like S3 Tables and Common Runtime (CRT). On the other hand, challenges like compaction and namespace structuring are discussed. Reflecting on his journey from working on the Xen hypervisor to AWS, Andy shares insights into scaling S3, including buckets spanning millions of hard disks. Show Highlights
Intro
The Duckbill Group sponsor read
Andy’s background
How AWS envisioned services being used vs. what customers actually do with them
The frustration of legacy applications not keeping up with the times
Why S3 is so accurate
S3 as a role model for how a service should be run
The Duckbill Group sponsor read
Why AWS made Iceberg into a native offering
Why S3 Tables is slightly more expensive
How Andy handled the transition from Zen to Nitro
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Andy Warfield joins Corey in this episode to discuss the evolution of storage technology at Amazon. This includes the evolution of S3 from archival storage to supporting modern AI and analytics. As Vice President and Distinguished Engineer at AWS, Andy is able to explain performance-enhancing innovations like S3 Tables and Common Runtime (CRT). On the other hand, challenges like compaction and namespace structuring are discussed. Reflecting on his journey from working on the Xen hypervisor to AWS, Andy shares insights into scaling S3, including buckets spanning millions of hard disks. Show Highlights(0:00) Intro(1:09) The Duckbill Group sponsor read(1:43) Andy’s background(3:38) How AWS envisioned services being used vs. what customers actually do with them(6:54) The frustration of legacy applications not keeping up with the times(10:14) Why S3 is so accurate(15:29) S3 as a role model for how a service should be run(18:04) The Duckbill Group sponsor read(18:46) Why AWS made Iceberg into a native offering(23:50) Why S3 Tables is slightly more expensive(28:23) How Andy handled the transition from Zen to Nitro(32:22) What Andy is currently excited about About Andy WarfieldAndrew Warfield is a VP / Distinguished Engineer at Amazon. As a senior technical leader at one of the world's largest technology companies, he plays a crucial role in shaping Amazon's engineering strategies and initiatives. LinksLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andywarfield/ Email: [email protected] SponsorThe Duckbill Group: duckbillgroup.com