Solving the 20-Year S3 File System Problem with Hunter Leath
Hunter Leath, CEO of Archil, spent 8 years building Amazon's EFS file storage system, learning exactly why making cloud storage act like a hard drive always fails. Old programs need hard drives, but cloud storage doesn't work like hard drives—a problem that's existed for 20 years. Now Hunter's building Archil, which puts super-fast storage between programs and S3 so they can finally work together. Your programs think they're talking to a regular disk while your data lives safely in the cloud. Hunter explains how they're doing what others couldn't, why it costs less than Amazon's own solutions, and why file systems suddenly matter again in the AI era. Show Highlights: (01:37) What Archil Does and Why It Exists (02:26) Why Mounting S3 as a File System Has Always Failed (03:07) What Building EFS Taught Hunter (06:55) Using Fast SSDs as a Cache Layer for S3 (09:45) Attaching Archil to Your Existing S3 Buckets (15:08) Why Archil Costs Less Than EBS When You Do the Math (17:56) What Happens If Amazon Builds This Feature (19:20) Competing With EBS Performance on GP3 Volumes (21:43) Raising $6.7 Million Without an AI Pitch (23:46) What Customers Get Wrong About Archil (28:07) Accessing Data Stored in Glacier Deep Archive (29:24) The Plan to Get Into the Linux Kernel (30:51) Where to Find Hunter About Hunter Leath: Hunter is the founder and CEO of Archil, which transforms S3 buckets into infinite, local file systems that provide instant access to massive data sets. Prior to Archill, Hunter spent the last ten years in the cloud storage industry, including 8 years building Amazon's Elastic File System product and one year on Netflix's core storage team. Links: Hunter Leath on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hleath/ Hunter Leath on X: https://x.com/jhleath/ Archil’s Website: https://archil.com Sponsored by: duckbillhq.com