Cloudflare R2 Storage S3 Compatible Object Storage Designed for Edge

Cloudflare, Inc. announced R2 Storage, a way for developers to store everything with automatic migration of data from S3-compatible services to make switching easy.

Designed for the edge, it will offer the ability to store large amounts of data, expanding what’s possible with Cloudflare while slashing the egress bandwidth fees associated with cloud provider storage to zero.

In order to build websites and applications, developers need a place to store photos, videos, and graphics that is accessible. When cloud storage first evolved it was a step forward in terms of providing that fast, flexible, and scalable storage for developers. However, increasingly egregious bandwidth pricing has made cloud storage an expensive headache for some developers, resulting in vendor lock-in. The firm’s mission is to help build a better Internet, which means the company is focused on making the Internet faster, safer, and also more affordable.

“Since AWS launched S3, cloud storage has attracted, and then locked in, developers with exorbitant egress fees,” said Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO. “We want developers to keep developing, not worrying about their storage bill. Our aim is to make R2 Storage the least expensive, most reliable option for storing data, with no egress charges. I’m constantly amazed by what developers are building on our platform, and look forward to continued innovation as we expand the tools they have access to.“

The company took the first step to address egregious egress charges in 2018 by creating the Bandwidth Alliance, a group of forward-thinking cloud and networking companies that are committed to discounting or waiving data transfer fees for shared customers. R2 Storage will push this commitment even further, adding automatic migration of data from S3-compatible services and providing developers a performant, object store – minus the egress fees.

R2 Storage will allow developers to:

• Slash their cloud provider egress and storage bills: Company’s goal is to make it the least expensive option for performant object storage, no matter the scale. That’s why the firm plans to eliminate egress fees, deliver object storage that is at least 10% cheaper than S3, and make infrequent access completely free for customers.

• Take advantage of performance of object storage built with company’s edge network: By leveraging Cloudflare Workers and Durable Objects, R2 will provide low latency, high throughput storage for the most demanding applications.

• Migrate data automatically from other providers to Cloudflare: R2 will include automatic migration from other S3-compatible cloud storage services that migrate data from providers as it’s requested, making saving on egress bandwidth bills as easy as setting a target bucket.

• Store application data wherever you need to across globe: R2 will replicate data across multiple regions and support jurisdictional restrictions, giving businesses the ability to control where their data is stored to meet their local and global needs.

• Unlock power and scale of Cloudflare Workers within their applications: R2 will be integrated with the Cloudflare Workers runtime, making building data pipelines and manipulating objects.

Resource:
Blog: Announcing Cloudflare R2 Storage: Rapid and Reliable Object Storage, minus the egress fees