A media platform stores user-uploaded images as binary data directly in Postgres. As the library grows, the database balloons, backups slow down, and read queries on surrounding rows become sluggish. Redesign the storage layer to move binary objects out of the database.
Storing large files (images, videos, PDFs) in external object storage (S3, GCS) instead of the database keeps the database lean and queries fast. Blobs out of the DB eliminate unnecessary table I/O, reduce backup size, and let files be served directly through a CDN — delivery latency drops from tens of milliseconds to single-digit milliseconds near the user. Use it when the data is a binary file of any reasonable size (above roughly 100 KB); skip it for small structured data that needs to be queried by column.
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