ShotGrid S3 and filesystem locations clarification

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Hello All :slight_smile:

While going through ShotGrid documentation I am still struggling to clarify few points and would really appreciate some clarification / advise on below questions:

  1. As far as I understand, ShotGrid uses AWS S3 as default storage for assets, attachments etc. But what if we are going to use Desktop version and define some shared storage location in configuration file → does it mean that everything will be stored in shared location or files will be stored in S3 as well ?

  2. I was able to find documentation on media isolation in SG but it is not clear how S3 storage correlates with defined filesystem locations.

  3. Is there possibility to use storage solutions provided by other cloud providers (GCP for instance) instead of S3?

Would be extremely grateful for any help :slight_smile:

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Hi,

welcome to ShotGrid :slight_smile:

I’ll answer your points:

  1. ShotGrid uses AWS S3 for storing uploaded media.
    So for example, if you upload a prores file to a Version then SG uses their S3 bucket to store this file, it will also use its ow transcoder to transcode the prores to a h264 for in browser playback.
    Both files stay in the S3 bucket.
    If you download the version file (download source) you get back the original uploaded file (prores in this case).
    All of this filestorage is handled by shotgrid and the api, you do not control it.
    When Shotgrid serves files from the S3 bucket (i.e. when you open a version for playback in the browser) the s3 file is shared via a presigned-url which is valid or 10 minutes (I believe) for security reasons.

  2. Media Isolation is a relatively new feature and as far as I understand you can ask SG Support to use your own bucket for media storage instead. You then bear the costs of storage but have full control over the media in the bucket and the infrastructure around this.
    ShotGrid (which runs on AWS) will still be hosted from within the Autodesk AWS account but a connection is made between your SG Server and your own AWS environment.

  3. No, ShotGrid runs on AWS infrastructure.
    However you are free to upload files elsewhere and link them to Published Files (or other entitiies) via the Web Link field.

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