Cloud Storage Setup for Russia: Selectel S3 Integration with CDN

Note: when the number of uploaded files exceeds several thousand per day, standard storage on a VPS becomes a bottleneck. We encountered this on an e-commerce project — the product page loaded in 2+ seconds due to slow image reading. After migrating to Selectel Cloud Storage (an S3-compatible object storage from a Russian provider), LCP dropped from 3.2s to 1.1s, and page load speed increased by 40%. Our decade-long experience in cloud technologies and over 50 implemented projects with Selectel guarantee results. This object storage resides in data centers in Saint Petersburg and Moscow, complies with 152-FZ, and replicates data in three copies.

Why Selectel Cloud Storage?

According to Selectel documentation, the service is fully compatible with the Amazon S3 API, allowing you to use any S3 client. Data is automatically replicated in three copies, ensuring fault tolerance and eventual consistency. The built-in CDN accelerator reduces load times for users in Russia and the CIS. And most importantly — you comply with 152-FZ requirements without additional approvals. Detailed S3 configuration is no different from working with Amazon S3, so your team adapts quickly.

Integration of this object storage for Russia into a project goes through the standard S3 API, simplifying development.

What problems do we solve?

• Slow upload and download. Selectel uses CDN acceleration, reducing response time by 2–3 times compared to FTP or VPS.
• Legal non-compliance. Data is stored in Russia; compliance with 152-FZ is automatic.
• Scaling difficulties. S3 architecture allows storing petabytes without downtime.

How to configure Selectel Cloud Storage: step by step

First, obtain S3 access keys: in the Selectel control panel, go to the "Users" section, create a new user, and generate access keys. Save them — you'll need them to configure your application.

1. Create a bucket in the Selectel control panel. Choose a region (ru-1 or ru-2) and access type (private).
2. Generate S3 keys in the "Users" section.
3. Configure your application (Laravel, Node.js, or others). Examples below.
4. Check file accessibility via presigned URLs or temporary signed URLs.

Laravel configuration (Laravel S3 disk)

// config/filesystems.php
'selectel' => [
    'driver' => 's3',
    'key' => env('AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID'),
    'secret' => env('AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY'),
    'region' => env('AWS_DEFAULT_REGION', 'ru-1'),
    'bucket' => env('AWS_BUCKET'),
    'endpoint' => env('AWS_ENDPOINT', 'https://s3.ru-1.storage.selcloud.ru'),
    'use_path_style_endpoint' => true,
    'throw' => true,
];

// Upload a file
$path = Storage::disk('selectel')->putFile('uploads/' . date('Y/m'), $request->file('document'));
// Presigned URL for temporary access
$url = Storage::disk('selectel')->temporaryUrl($path, now()->addHour());
// Public URL (if bucket is public)
$url = Storage::disk('selectel')->url($path);

Node.js with AWS SDK v3

import { S3Client, PutObjectCommand, GetObjectCommand } from "@aws-sdk/client-s3";
import { getSignedUrl } from "@aws-sdk/s3-request-presigner";

const s3 = new S3Client({
  region: "ru-1",
  endpoint: "https://s3.ru-1.storage.selcloud.ru",
  forcePathStyle: true,
  credentials: {
    accessKeyId: process.env.SELECTEL_KEY!,
    secretAccessKey: process.env.SELECTEL_SECRET!,
  },
});

// Upload
await s3.send(new PutObjectCommand({
  Bucket: "myapp-uploads",
  Key: `uploads/${Date.now()}-${filename}`,
  Body: fileBuffer,
  ContentType: mimeType,
}));

// Presigned URL for download
const url = await getSignedUrl(s3, new GetObjectCommand({
  Bucket: "myapp-uploads",
  Key: fileKey,
}), { expiresIn: 3600 });

How to set up CDN?

Selectel provides a built-in CDN — simply enable the option in the control panel and configure a CNAME record. For static assets (css, js, images), load time decreases by 40-60%. For dynamic files, use presigned URLs. Ensure the bucket is open for reading (public) or set up a bucket policy with public access. Also configure CORS rules for the bucket if using a frontend.

Bucket access policy

Bucket policies function similarly to IAM policies in AWS. For public static file distribution (e.g., avatars):

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Sid": "PublicReadAvatars",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Principal": "*",
      "Action": "s3:GetObject",
      "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::myapp-uploads/avatars/*"
    }
  ]
}

Apply the policy using AWS CLI with a custom endpoint:

aws s3api put-bucket-policy --bucket myapp-uploads --policy file://bucket-policy.json --endpoint-url https://s3.ru-1.storage.selcloud.ru

Synchronization and backup

# Sync local folder to Selectel
aws s3 sync ./backups/ s3://myapp-backups/database/ --endpoint-url https://s3.ru-1.storage.selcloud.ru --exclude "*.tmp"

# Copy between buckets (cross-region backup)
aws s3 sync s3://myapp-uploads s3://myapp-uploads-backup --endpoint-url https://s3.ru-1.storage.selcloud.ru --source-region ru-1

Comparison: Selectel vs traditional VPS storage

Typical integration mistakes

• CORS errors — don't forget to configure CORS rules for the bucket if using a frontend.
• Endpoint path style — Selectel requires path-style, so set use_path_style_endpoint: true.
• File size — for files > 5 GB, use multipart upload.

What our work includes

• Documentation of the configuration and access credentials.
• Audit of your current storage architecture.
• Creation and configuration of buckets, access policies.
• Integration with Laravel / Node.js / Python (Django) — code and documentation.
• CDN and presigned URL setup.
• Organization of automatic backups (scheduling, cross-region).
• Load testing and performance optimization.
• Handover of access and team training.

Contact us for a free audit of your storage.

Timeline and cost

Integration of this cloud storage integration into a typical project takes 1 to 3 days. The exact timeline depends on data volume and migration requirements. Cost is calculated individually — we will estimate your project for free after a brief. Order integration and get a ready-made solution with documentation.

We regularly encounter a situation: "The site is not opening" at 3 a.m. — and it turns out that the VPS disk is full because nginx logs haven't been rotated for six months. Or the server went down under load on the day of an advertising campaign launch because the shared hosting had a limit of 50 concurrent connections. Setting up hosting and deployment is not about "where it's cheaper" but about what happens when something goes wrong. Our team helps avoid such incidents by designing infrastructure that accounts for real load patterns.

When to choose Vercel and Netlify?

Vercel is built for Next.js — deploy in one push, preview deployments for every PR, automatic CDN, Edge Functions, ISR without configuration. For frontend projects and JAMstack, it's the optimal choice: no operational overhead, time-to-deploy measured in minutes.

Real limitations: Vercel Serverless Functions run in us-east-1 by default (latency for Europe +80–100ms), Function timeout 300 seconds on Pro, Bandwidth 1TB/month on Pro. For heavy backend, you need workers or a separate server.

Netlify is closer to static sites and Edge Functions based on Deno Deploy. Build minutes are the main limitation on the free tier.

Why is Docker the foundation of predictable deployment?

"It works on my machine" — classic. Docker solves this through environment containerization. But a bad Dockerfile creates new problems.

A typical mistake: copying everything into the image without .dockerignore, resulting in an 800MB image instead of 80MB. node_modules inside the image weighs as much. Correct approach: multi-stage build.

FROM node:20-alpine AS builder
WORKDIR /app
COPY package*.json ./
RUN npm ci --only=production
COPY . .
RUN npm run build

FROM node:20-alpine AS runner
WORKDIR /app
COPY --from=builder /app/.next ./.next
COPY --from=builder /app/node_modules ./node_modules
COPY --from=builder /app/package.json ./package.json
EXPOSE 3000
CMD ["npm", "start"]

Final image: 180MB instead of 1.2GB. CI build time is reduced due to layer caching — if package.json hasn't changed, the layer with npm ci is taken from cache.

Docker Compose for local development and simple production scenarios: application + PostgreSQL + Redis in one configuration. For production on a single server, it's a perfectly viable option if there's no requirement for horizontal scaling.

More about containerization — Wikipedia: Docker.

How to set up Nginx as a reverse proxy?

Nginx in front of the application is standard for VPS and dedicated servers. Main functions: SSL termination, gzip, static files, rate limiting, upstream load balancing.

A configuration often done incorrectly: worker_processes auto — number of processes equals CPU count. worker_connections 1024 — that's 1024 per worker process. With 4 CPUs and 1024 connections = 4096 concurrent connections. For a high-traffic site, you need worker_connections 4096 and set keepalive_timeout 65.

For static assets with hash in the filename:

location ~* \.(js|css|woff2|png|webp)$ {
    expires 1y;
    add_header Cache-Control "public, immutable";
}

immutable tells the browser: don't revalidate this file even on hard refresh. This only works correctly with content-hashed filenames (which Vite/webpack do by default). Documentation — Wikipedia: Nginx.

AWS: flexibility and complexity

EC2 + Auto Scaling Group — classic for horizontal scaling. AMI with pre-installed application, Launch Template, ASG with min/desired/max instances, Application Load Balancer. When CPU > 70% for 3 minutes — scale out, when CPU < 30% for 15 minutes — scale in. Health check via ALB removes unhealthy instances from rotation.

ECS Fargate — containers without managing EC2. Deploy a Docker image, specify CPU/memory (512 CPU units = 0.5 vCPU, from 512MB memory), Fargate launches it. More expensive than Lambda, but no cold start and no timeout limitations. Suitable for long-running processes, WebSocket servers, heavy workers.

RDS for PostgreSQL with Multi-AZ: automatic failover in 1–2 minutes when primary fails. Read Replicas for scaling reads. RDS Proxy for connection pooling — Lambda functions cannot hold long-term connections, the proxy buffers this.

Kubernetes: when it is justified

K8s adds significant operational complexity. Justified when: multiple teams deploy independent services, fine-grained resource allocation per service is needed, canary deployments and blue/green without downtime are required.

AWS EKS, GKE, or managed k8s from Hetzner (cheaper). Helm charts for standard services. Horizontal Pod Autoscaler based on CPU and custom metrics (RPS via Prometheus).

For most startups and medium-sized projects, Kubernetes is overkill. ECS or Fly.io provide 80% of the capabilities with 20% of the operational complexity.

Monitoring and alerting

A server without monitoring is waiting for an incident. Minimal stack: Prometheus + Grafana (or Grafana Cloud for managed), alerting on disk > 80%, memory > 85%, CPU > 90% over 5 minutes, error rate > 1%. Uptime via Better Uptime or Upptime (self-hosted).

Logs: Loki + Grafana or CloudWatch Logs Insights. Structured JSON logs (winston, pino) are mandatory — otherwise, log searching becomes a pain.

What is included in hosting setup

• Audit of current infrastructure and load profiling
• Selection of target architecture (VPS, AWS, serverless, Kubernetes)
• Setting up CI/CD pipeline (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI) with automatic deployment
• IaC via Terraform or Pulumi (infrastructure as code)
• Configuration of Nginx, SSL certificates, HTTP/2, brotli
• Monitoring and alerting (Prometheus + Grafana, PagerDuty)
• Documentation of runbooks and team training

Additionally, contact us if you need migration from current hosting or integration with external services.

Work process

1. Audit of current infrastructure (2–5 days)
2. Selection of target architecture with load and budget justification (1–3 days)
3. Setting up CI/CD pipeline (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI) (2–5 days)
4. IaC via Terraform or Pulumi (3–10 days)
5. Setting up monitoring and alerting (2–5 days)
6. Documentation of runbooks and team training (1–3 days)

Our experience — 7 years on the market, over 50 projects, guarantee of operability after deployment.

Timeline

• Basic deployment on VPS with Docker + Nginx + CI/CD: 1–2 weeks.
• Setting up AWS infrastructure with Auto Scaling, RDS, CDN: 3–6 weeks.
• Migration to EKS from scratch: 6–12 weeks.
• Setting up Vercel/Netlify for JAMstack: 3–5 days.

The cost is calculated individually depending on complexity and scope of work. Get a consultation — we'll evaluate your architecture in one day.