Caching vs Hot Linking images

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onecurlyfry
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Caching vs Hot Linking images

Post by onecurlyfry »

Hey all -

I'm currently collectiong 1.3 million records/day - one of the fields is the thumbnail link for visual display (social media feeds - so a twitter post with twitter users thumbnail).

I believe best practice would be to cache the image rather than hot link. Problem is, I'm collecting 180 days worth of data, at 1.3 million records, means I'll have somewhere around 2.3 billion records, at a few kb each, is still something like 500 gb's. Not exactly earth shattering, but I'm wondering if that's still the best way to go.

And if it is, given a link, what's the fastest way to cache it?

Thanks,

Scott
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