Storage for pdf, docx, jpg

Question

I have application with monolithic architecture and with PostgreSQL as a main storage. There are two docker images, one for db and one for application server. There is high probability that application will be splitted to few services in the near future and it will evolve to microservice architeture. Also, there is high probability that solution will be part of private cloud. Currently, there is requirments to read/store different files though the application, like: pdf, jpg, docx, etc.. And I am on crossroad what will be better to choose in current situation as file storage.

I see few options for the moment:

1. Object Storage Server (For instance: MinIO which is compatible with Amazon S3 cloud storage service)
2. PostgreSQL (To store files as BLOB)
3. File System (To store files on host machine of docker containers)

I read multiple posts where DB solution was compared with File System, but I do not find any comparation when some Object Storage Server was taken into account.

• https://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/2445/should-binary-files-be-stored-in-the-database
• What is difference between storing data in a blob, vs. storing a pointer to a file?

Please advise which option would be good to choose or please point me to some comparation post where it was already asked

Answer 1

The future direction you mentioned will benefit from having storage as a service, where multiple containers might access the same files. It will give flexibility if you need write/update operations in future.

Some points for trade-off:
If you go with database, you will have to write that service yourself (1) and it will be a custom one, not a widely common online like S3 (2). Contrast to that if you allow direct SQL access to database for the files, it would make your solution brittle because of lack of encapsulation (3). Blob storage in db works (ACID operations), but I have seen db storage management becoming a hassle for DBAs (4).