W3TC cache settings and unusually high Amazon S3/AWS fees

  • FGrover

    (@fgrover)


    12 years, 9 months ago

    I was wondering if anyone knew which W3TC cache settings might be contributing to my high Amazon S3 / AWS fees?

    In any given month, it looks like I’m getting charged ~$10 for PUT, COPY, POST, or LIST requests (856,287!) and ~$10 for 96G of “data transfer in”… this with only ~800 page loads for the month. The blog is photo heavy (11 MB on the front page).

    I think I may have changed some of the W3TC default cache settings a few months ago, not realizing it would affect my S3/AWS billing. I’m not sure what the original W3TC cache values were.

    Any suggestions on which W3TC cache timing settings I should adjust to lower my costs? I have a feeling my current cache settings are not efficient and are costing me a lot of money (and performance if the files are not being served from the cached cloudfront files!).

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • Plugin Contributor Frederick Townes

    (@fredericktownes)

    12 years, 9 months ago

    Are you using force overwriting option? I suggest switching to origin pull for cloudfront.

    Thread Starter FGrover

    (@fgrover)

    12 years, 9 months ago

    Yes, “force over-writing of existing files” checkbox is ticked when I upload to the CDN, however I haven’t made any changes to the blog/uploaded anything new in the last few months, so I don’t think this could be the cause of the 800 000+ PUT, COPY, POST, or LIST requests on S3 or the 96GB of “data transfer in” reported by AWS.

    How do I go about “switching to origin pull for cloudfront”?

    Plugin Contributor Frederick Townes

    (@fredericktownes)

    12 years, 9 months ago

    Simply select that option on the general settings tab and then populate the fields needed in the configuration box on the cdn settings tab.

    Thread Starter FGrover

    (@fgrover)

    12 years, 9 months ago

    Thanks, I found Origin Pull under the CDN dropdown menu in the general settings tab and switched from Origin Push to Origin Pull.

    After switching to Origin Pull I noticed in the CDN tab that the Access key ID: and Secret key: were blank and that the Origin: now displayed my blog’s url instead of the S3 bucket I had before.

    I re-entered my AWS Access Key ID and Secret Key, but is this necessary now that I am using Origin Pull and bypassing the S3 bucket? I also entered my cloudfront distribution domain name under “Replace site’s hostname with:” and populated 7 of the CNAME fields with my cloudfront cnames.

    Now, when I click Test Cloudfront Distribution, I get the following notification: Error: Distribution for origin “www.[myblogurl].com” not found.

    Is this a problem? The images on the blog appear to be loading properly from the CDN (“reading images.mycdncname.com, images2.mycdncname” etc appears in the firefox status window when I empty the browser cache and load the page). Everything seems to be working as it should, but I do get that error code when I click Test Cloudfront Distribution — is this because the plugin is looking for a cloudfront distribution bearing my blog’s domain name?

    Also, I noticed a new W3TC suggestion pop-up when I switched from Origin Push to Origin Pull:

    “Maximize CDN usage by modify attachments url”

    Is this something I should do now that I have switched from Origin Push to Origin Pull? ie enter my blog’s domain name in the Modify attachment URLs “Domain to rename” field and click start?

    Plugin Contributor Frederick Townes

    (@fredericktownes)

    12 years, 7 months ago

    W3TC is going to attempt to configure your cloudfront distribution for you. So yes it’s a problem that the distribution you’re attempting to create is throwing errors. If you need further help, please submit a bug submission form from the support tab of the plugin.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
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