So I recently found that Linode began offering S3 compatible object storage. Upon reading the documentation I found that it had the one options that pushed me to Rackspace Cloudfiles.

Namely, it has an api to create a time-limited public link to individual files. This is what has been driving me to Rackspace Cloudfiles (along with their CDN) rather than Amazon S3. I also preferred the Rackspace pricing structure, which was much more straight forward than Amazon.

Anyway, Linode now has an S3 compatable offering, which is free until the end of May, and after that it is only $5/mo for the first 250GB of data with 1TB or outbound transfer, which is a sweet deal. They also have a number of documents in their library, such as:

• Index of Documents
• Pricing and Limitations
• Getting Started With Object Storage
• Host a Static Site On

Note that the latest Debian releases don’t have the s3cmd utility mentioned in many documents - however it has been replaced with the s4cmd, which has most (if not all) the functionality of the s3cmd utility. The key point here is that you need to include the –endpoint-url option, that needs to be set to the url of your bucket.

The only drawback that I see to using this to host a static site (which is one of the use-cases listed) is that it cannot be accessed via https due to the nature of the SSL certificates used to serve up the data.

All things considered, it is still a great service at an excellent price. I’m currently moving a bunch of DVD/Data archives off of one of my client’s servers to a bucket in order to free up some disk space.