I will be launching a web application soon which will require users to upload pictures for others to view. I would like to use Amazon S3 to store the images as it scales and is cheap. The user will use a form to upload their file, it will be processed with php and saved to the S3 mount thats attached to the web server.
I am anticipating and hoping tens or hundreds of thousands of images will eventually be uploaded.
My first question is whether an S3 bucket mount is robust and fast enough for such an application, or would I be better off using Amazon EBS. Although I'd like to have my own dedicated box rather than use an EC2 instance.
Also, I am at this point unfamiliar with S3, but when I do upload files, is it appropriate to put them in a single bucket rather than a cascade of directories? It seems it might be ok since each 'bucket' is virtual anyway.