Image Uploads - CDN, MongoDB, or NFS?

Question

I have an admin type system for a website with multiple web servers where users can configure pages and upload images to appear on the page (kind of similar to a CMS). If you already have a MongoDB instance with replica sets setup, what is the preferred way to store these uploads so that failover exists and why?

1. CDN, such as Amazon S3 / CloudFront.
2. Store the images in MongoDB? I do this now and don't use GridFS cause our images are all under 1MB.
3. Use some type of NFS with some sort of failover setup. If #3, then how do you configure this failover?

I use #2 just fine right now and have used #3 without the failover before. If I use MongoDB as the data store for my website and for serving images, could these GET requests for the images ever impact the performance of getting non-image data out of the DB?

Answer 1

could these GET requests for the images ever impact the performance of getting non-image data out of the DB?

Well, more image requests = more HTTP connections to your web servers = more requests for images from MongoDB = more network traffic.

So, yes, getting more image data from the DB could, in theory, impact getting non-image data. All you need to do is request 1000 images / sec at 1MB an image and you'll start seeing lots of network traffic between your MongoDB servers and your Web servers.

Note that this isn't a MongoDB limitation, this is a limitation of network throughput.

If you start getting lots of traffic, then the CDN is definitely recommended. If you already have an HTTP page that outputs the image, this should be pretty straight-forward.

Answer 2

Why not a CDN in front of MongoDB?