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Servarica's new unlimited storage plan is quite interesting - Page 2
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Servarica's new unlimited storage plan is quite interesting

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Comments

  • @typicalGtaTG said:

    @stevewatson301 said:

    @typicalGtaTG said: How does it grow tho... The disk size may grow but how would the file system know?

    It says that right on their webpage:

    No, the server will never run out of space because all our storage offers we decoupled storage from compute servers,
    that mean usually your VPS is running on a server while your storage is actually in another 1 or more servers (servers specially built to have many disks with enough power and cooling),
    The hypervisor (the compute server) run NFS to access the storage servers and offer the storage to the vps
    That mean we can have a VPS with 500TB disk space on a compute server that have very little disk as long as this compute server can access 1 or more storage servers with enough space for 500TB

    I understand that they have a separate server for the storage, But the file system needs to know that it has more space doesn't it? For example when you make a vm on proxmox and then decide to increase the disk space, You have to manually grow the fs on your vm or when you migrate an RPi to another SD, let's say from 16GB to 32, You have to run the raspi-config command. Similar goes for many cloud providers like AWS, GCP etc.

    It's not very unsustainable either since even on the $15 plan, it's like 1TB/yr. It's avery cool imo, But I need a better understanding of this. The fs running on the VM doesn't know that more space is available does it?

    Apologies, If I'm missing something here.

    You're correct but most providers also use cloud images, meaning when you reboot the VM after increasing the raw disk space, VM will notice it and automatically resize its fs according to the available space.

    https://cloudinit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/topics/modules.html#resizefs

  • PulsedMediaPulsedMedia Member, Patron Provider

    It can be sustainable business model.

    We've been offering bonus storage for many years, and keep on growing it larger and larger, and can be much greater than this. Then again we do not offer it was guaranteed, but considering we've been not hitting global max limit for few weeks now it's pretty likely you get yours, depending on if that particular server has any to give.

    Our current max is +300% bonus, meaning you get quadruple storage. Some bonus points are shared across all accounts, those which are billing profile based, ie. months customers total and euros paid. Part of it is on per service basis: https://wiki.pulsedmedia.com/index.php/Pulsed_Media_Free_Bonus_Disk_Policy

    Sorry not meaning to hijack the thread or turn anyone away from Servarica. Quite to the contrary, just saying it's not as impossible as people think when done in this kind of fashion :)

    Thanked by 1servarica_hani
  • servarica_haniservarica_hani Member, Patron Provider

    Hi Everyone,

    Didnt expect this to be caught this fast and so many questions :)

    Note: we still didnt have the offer up in appsumo but they require the plans to be up before they put them thats why we made them public

    We are trying to target different user sector and this idea and the plans are done in a way that attract those users

    Those plans are made mainly for appsumo , and from my observation of their offers and the ones that sell well there I noticed that most users care about that their plan appreciate with time.

    Think about the users who bought owned whmcs license int he early days and now they can sell them for much more than they paid for it plus they get to use it all this time for free

    So these plans target this mind set by reversing how usually VPS plans work, usually VPS plan lose its value with time , if anyone check his plans from 5 years ago they will find the plans are really bad compared to today plans

    So here the whole idea and the process is to create VPS plan that is actually much more valuable 5 years from now than it is at this moment while maintaining that it is still profitable to us

    the plans you see here are the result of this thought process

    here will try to answer the questions one by one

    @typicalGtaTG said:
    How does it grow tho... The disk size may grow but how would the file system know? It's fine when it's something like cPanel cause the file system is same just the user is allotted a certain amount of space. But when you're running your own fs, How does it know to grow itself everyday? You wouldn't want to grow it unattended on a cron either.

    Current implementation require a restart to do disk expansion (we tried to do it while VPS is up but it had issues)
    the idea is that you will collect storage credits daily
    and one you reboot the VPS the storage of your VPS will expand (if you use the templates we provide the OS will see the expended disk after reboot )

    We have another implementation that do grow the disk while the disk is online daily and we keep it up to the user to make their OS see the disk expiation but we decided not to release it as it makes it hard for the vast majority of customers

    @LTniger said:
    Immediatelly pump in 1 exabyte of data and test how far you can go before blatant lies and excuses comes in.

    There is no unlimited storage. Ask amazon.

    this is not typical unlimited storage that you see in some big shared hosting providers, the storage you can have in the vps is limited at any point of time but that limit is increasing toward infinity by time

    So yes in 1000 years maybe we will run out of storage :)

    @kennsann said:
    Unlimited Storage plan is $550/yr = 8TB start and at the end of year its 13.457TB. Which is about $3.405/TB/Month calculating at the end of the term.

    vs

    Their regular mammoth plan is $264/yr = 8TB (only has 8TB BW though), is about $2.75/TB/Month

    It will take you years before you beat the price of the mammoth and the savings you could have gotten if you chose the latter. Pretty sure its the same with the smaller unlimited storage plans. Im not sure what Im missing here.

    My 2 cents.

    on the third year onward the unlimited storage plan will be better value , and this will increase with time
    this is not made for users who need storage for few months (some of our users have been with us for more than 10 years) So this is marketed toward long term customers

    Also another fact is that this plan appreciate over time , so if you use the plan for 4 years and decided to transfer it , you may get high price for the transfer

    @yoursunny said:
    This is likely a legitimate service.
    You start with 3TB and gain 1TB every year.
    Essentially, the provider is betting on the storage pricing decreasing over time.
    If they bet wrong, either there's a Hetzner-style price increase or provider deadpools and you lose all your data.

    The increase here is calculated that the product price can support it
    for example if you pay 20$ there is like 4$ of it set aside to buy the new disks that will be added to handle the disk expansion

    Thats why this product will never be same $/TB initially as our black friday offers as they dont have that little extra that is absolutely needed here

    The process goes like this (all numbers here are just for example and not actual numbers)
    in one year lets say we get extra 40$ from the customer more that the running cost and the ROI of the initial plan specs (ex .we got 200$ and the plan really costed us 160$ to get our ROI)
    this 35$ is enough to get the the extra disk the user have in the plan (full purchase price)
    and the extra 5$ should be more than enough to cover the extra power cost of the new storage added per year

    the calculation is more complicated than this but this is the general idea

    in another word the user pay once for the extra storage they accumulate each year

    @default said:
    Some of you guys compare it with Mammoth and other VPS offers. In my opinion it could be better than that.

    If @servarica_hani wants to go on storage marketing path, they could probably do it better by using a stripped-down Shared Hosting Unlimited service (without hosting website or email, just data over FTP/SFTP). This way of adding space every day is great, but on a shared hosting plan could way better, because @servarica_hani manages the service, while people get to enjoy storage without worrying about underlying operating system, packages or partitions.

    The problem with such storage is that it's risky, as @yoursunny identified. Right now it may be cheap; technology evolves and it get cheaper (per TB) every year, as larger capacities get discovered. However old drives fail and after a few years they need replacement. Sometimes even another storage-cryptocurrency may arise. In the end it all becomes a bet on future, based on current market consumption, trend, and development.

    Anyway: great idea @servarica_hani - and I appreciate your enthusiasm plus dedication.

    the idea is excellent and will check how feasible it is :)

    For the risk as I explained to @yoursunny it should be good although yes if storage price go significantly up for extended period of time we will be in trouble ( prices going up for few months is not an issue as we dont add much per month and we can handle a price increase for few months the issue if the prices due to some disaster goes up and stay up for years which I think and hope is very slim chance )

    @typicalGtaTG said:
    I understand that they have a separate server for the storage, But the file system needs to know that it has more space doesn't it? For example when you make a vm on proxmox and then decide to increase the disk space, You have to manually grow the fs on your vm or when you migrate an RPi to another SD, let's say from 16GB to 32, You have to run the raspi-config command. Similar goes for many cloud providers like AWS, GCP etc.

    It's not very unsustainable either since even on the $15 plan, it's like 1TB/yr. It's avery cool imo, But I need a better understanding of this. The fs running on the VM doesn't know that more space is available does it?

    Apologies, If I'm missing something here.

    you are correct thats why we do it in reboot , the file system expand at that time using the scripts we have in the template (complex process , I didnt work on it personally, our team did it and i can check the details with them if you have questions)

    @jar said:
    If it's hard for the average user to figure out how to use the increases that's even better. The average user further subsidizes the power user and the margins look even better. Doesn't even need to be practical if it gets people's deal radar going.

    it is actually automated as long as the user use our templates , but i like the thought process :)

    @Neoon said:
    Its not unlimited, there is a limit, why that bait title?

    it is an infinite function that increase toward infinity
    So when t is infinity the storage is infinity

    Maybe a better name to call it infinite storage VPS ?

  • @servarica_hani you think we can get a deal for LET? It doesnt have to be a BF level deal but anything is appreciated!

  • servarica_haniservarica_hani Member, Patron Provider

    @Astro said:
    @servarica_hani you think we can get a deal for LET? It doesnt have to be a BF level deal but anything is appreciated!

    honestly I didnt think there will be this interest in the idea here ,
    So will check if we can do one within LET limit and if yes will post it after appsumo offer have some time

    Thanked by 1typicalGtaTG
  • I'm interested but say I buy it, will I be able to upgrade the package later assuming I need a flat increase in storage while maintaining existing bonuses?

  • servarica_haniservarica_hani Member, Patron Provider

    @james50a said:
    I'm interested but say I buy it, will I be able to upgrade the package later assuming I need a flat increase in storage while maintaining existing bonuses?

    yes I assume you mean add 3TB or extra ram , cpu at some point of time
    yes upgrades work as any plan and you keep the existing gains in the storage that you accumulated over time

    Thanked by 2Astro james50a
  • deankdeank Member, Troll

    Don't bother with LET users. You will regret it.

  • PulsedMediaPulsedMedia Member, Patron Provider

    @servarica_hani said: Those plans are made mainly for appsumo

    I have managed to miss appsumo before. Doesn't bring up in my mind first a place to sell VPS at all, gets some sort of fiverr feel actually when you lookup VPS there. Interesting.

  • servarica_haniservarica_hani Member, Patron Provider

    @PulsedMedia said:

    @servarica_hani said: Those plans are made mainly for appsumo

    I have managed to miss appsumo before. Doesn't bring up in my mind first a place to sell VPS at all, gets some sort of fiverr feel actually when you lookup VPS there. Interesting.

    Actually one of our users suggested doing offers there (didnt know it before) , then started looking around to understand their users
    after that I asked the appsumo team if my idea makes sense and they were excited so we started working on it

    Thanked by 1PulsedMedia
  • @servarica_hani said:

    @PulsedMedia said:

    @servarica_hani said: Those plans are made mainly for appsumo

    I have managed to miss appsumo before. Doesn't bring up in my mind first a place to sell VPS at all, gets some sort of fiverr feel actually when you lookup VPS there. Interesting.

    Actually one of our users suggested doing offers there (didnt know it before) , then started looking around to understand their users
    after that I asked the appsumo team if my idea makes sense and they were excited so we started working on it

    When do you plan to launch in AppSumo?

  • servarica_haniservarica_hani Member, Patron Provider

    @plumberg said:

    When do you plan to launch in AppSumo?

    those unlimited plans mentioned here in this thread

    Thanked by 1plumberg
  • @servarica_hani said:

    @plumberg said:

    When do you plan to launch in AppSumo?

    those unlimited plans mentioned here in this thread

    I tried searching AppSumo - guess its not available there yet.

  • Daniel15Daniel15 Veteran
    edited January 2022

    @servarica_hani said: so if you use the plan for 4 years and decided to transfer it , you may get high price for the transfer

    IMO the issue (as a provider) is that someone can resell it for a high price, and you don't actually get any of that money, unless you charge a transfer fee.

  • servarica_haniservarica_hani Member, Patron Provider

    @plumberg said:
    I tried searching AppSumo - guess its not available there yet.

    not yet published

    @Daniel15 said:
    IMO the issue (as a provider) is that someone can resell it for a high price, and you don't actually get any of that money, unless you charge a transfer fee.

    That is 100% fine by us , because the product itself is profitable so if someone managed to make profit out of it good for them

    Thanked by 1plumberg
  • @LiliLabs said:
    This seems nice, but like others have said, you'd need to have it for several years in order to beat the existing mammoth plans. Seems like an interesting idea, I'll pick one up if they ever decide to run a promo (or give an option to add the unlimited disk growth into existing promo plans"

    The larger the storage, the more likely it's for long term storage.

  • @servarica_hani said:
    it is an infinite function that increase toward infinity
    So when t is infinity the storage is infinity

    Maybe a better name to call it infinite storage VPS ?

    That's not how this works. There's absolutely nowhere in your available or maximum storage capacity formula (that includes physical area, storage servers, available power, etc) that includes infinity.

    This is specifically growing/expanding and absolutely nothing to do with unlimited. You're asking for trouble using "unlimited". You can still easily market this as an expanding server, but absolutely not "unlimited" in any sense of the word. Even the 100Mbps bandwidth is better to say "unmetered" since its inherently limited by speed and capacity per time period.

  • servarica_haniservarica_hani Member, Patron Provider

    @TimboJones

    if the term unlimited is used to describe the physical resources then nothing on the universe is unlimited or infinite.

    but usually the term is used to say there is no limit within limiting context ,

    e.g. if someone living by a river you could say they have unlimited water supply although in reality they are bounded by the bigger limit of how much water flow in the river

    same idea can be said about unlimited 100mbps the idea you are not limited within the bigger limiting context of 100mbps

    the situation for storage here is that the total storage in the VPS follow a mathematical function that does not converge to a finite number and instead Diverge to infinity

    the equation that describe the storage capacity over time for the first plan looks like this

    storage equation

    and this is a Divergent series which is explained as "the infinite sequence of the partial sums of the series does not have a finite limit. " (from Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divergent_series )

    the term above " does not have a finite limit." is equivalent to unlimited

    I honestly dont feel the naming is misleading at all specially that we describe the process and how much increase in details and this look much better than some shared hosting providers just throwing the the word unlimited for the amount of storage they offer with their plans without describing the limiting function or limiting context

  • TimboJonesTimboJones Member
    edited February 2022

    @servarica_hani said:
    @TimboJones

    if the term unlimited is used to describe the physical resources then nothing on the universe is unlimited or infinite.

    You're going to find it pretty common that infinite/infinity wouldn't be involved in resource and capacity for physical resources and infinity is used for theoretical resources. You're providing physical resources, even if "virtually".

    but usually the term is used to say there is no limit within limiting context ,

    e.g. if someone living by a river you could say they have unlimited water supply although in reality they are bounded by the bigger limit of how much water flow in the river

    No, they really wouldn't. Mostly because, again, real world and environmental changes. Now, if they lived next to an Ocean, I would agree to "unlimited water supply".

    same idea can be said about unlimited 100mbps the idea you are not limited within the bigger limiting context of 100mbps

    This isn't the same. The "within the bigger limiting context of 100Mbps" is the bandwidth of 100Mbps 24/7 for a month or billing period. The maximum possible is achievable, doesn't grow or change (ignoring calendar day difference per month). Your unlimited storage has limited storage and grows, meaning limits are changing.

    the situation for storage here is that the total storage in the VPS follow a mathematical function that does not converge to a finite number and instead Diverge to infinity

    the equation that describe the storage capacity over time for the first plan looks like this

    storage equation

    Oh boy.

    and this is a Divergent series which is explained as "the infinite sequence of the partial sums of the series does not have a finite limit. " (from Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divergent_series )

    the term above " does not have a finite limit." is equivalent to unlimited

    I'm arguing you don't have "infinite sequence" so that's irrelevant.

    I honestly dont feel the naming is misleading at all specially that we describe the process and how much increase in details and this look much better than some shared hosting providers just throwing the the word unlimited for the amount of storage they offer with their plans without describing the limiting function or limiting context

    I don't agree with it either, but you're no different that the details are in the small print, not headline. And they don't agree, IMO. It's also not different in that you get so much space until the provider allocates more over time or as needed. Shared Hosting also generally limits the usage and types of files that can be hosted, so they're not going to have nearly as high as storage use cases, unlike something specifically being sold as unlimited storage on your own VPS.

  • servarica_haniservarica_hani Member, Patron Provider

    @TimboJones said:

    I thought about the naming yesterday and although I still feel the wording unlimited storage vps is fair I missed 1 important point

    In this case my position does not matter because at the end I don't want to mislead potential customer and if the naming did mislead other potential (majority) customers then the naming must be changed

    Based on this I decided to change it to Unlimited Expanding Storage VPS, this way users will understand that the vps is not just unlimited but it is unlimited expanding vps

    I think this way the naming is much more clear and avoid confusion

  • Grorage VPS or Growrage VPS!

    Thanked by 1servarica_hani
  • GAAP-1
    GAAP-2
    GAAP-3

    Thanked by 1servarica_hani
  • @servarica_hani What's the RAID level on these plans?

  • servarica_haniservarica_hani Member, Patron Provider

    @nulldev said:
    @servarica_hani What's the RAID level on these plans?

    raidz2 (similar to raid 6 )

    Thanked by 1nulldev
  • james50ajames50a Member
    edited February 2022

    Was initially kinda interested but ran into a few problems trying to justify it to myself.
    1. The plan only ever makes sense on long term agreements but the plans existence isn't guranteed by a contract and can be killed off once it would be beneficial or if company dies
    2. What a good price per terabyte today is, might be expensive af in 5 years therbye nullifying any potential benefit this plan may have offered

    Suggestion:
    Variable increasing storage plans are a great idea and as a person with an ever expanding Linux iso collection I'm interested . That being said i think the plan needs to be reworked/a new offering so the average price per terabyte over the yearly /tri yearly offering is equilivant or better than purchasing an equilivant amount of flat storage today. Then at renewals just take whatever the best current flat rate per tb is + fee for continued increases

  • servarica_haniservarica_hani Member, Patron Provider

    @james50a said:
    Was initially kinda interested but ran into a few problems trying to justify it to myself.
    1. The plan only ever makes sense on long term agreements but the plans existence isn't guranteed by a contract and can be killed off once it would be beneficial or if company dies
    2. What a good price per terabyte today is, might be expensive af in 5 years therbye nullifying any potential benefit this plan may have offered

    Suggestion:
    Variable increasing storage plans are a great idea and as a person with an ever expanding Linux iso collection I'm interested . That being said i think the plan needs to be reworked/a new offering so the average price per terabyte over the yearly /tri yearly offering is equilivant or better than purchasing an equilivant amount of flat storage today. Then at renewals just take whatever the best current flat rate per tb is + fee for continued increases

    That is hard to implement as we will be selling just promises , since we will tell the users that the increase is dependant on the market price of the disks this year , users will not know what they are getting before getting in this long relationship
    Also that means the amount of storage given could be less as it could be more than what it is now (since it fluctuate based on the market price) and no one will be happy to get less storage than what they thought they will get

    Also who can decide the price , I feel we as provider have vested interest in saying the disk price is higher so we give less for the same amount of money (we will never do that but for anyone who didnt have years of relation with us will think this way)

  • @servarica_hani said:

    @TimboJones said:

    I thought about the naming yesterday and although I still feel the wording unlimited storage vps is fair I missed 1 important point

    In this case my position does not matter because at the end I don't want to mislead potential customer and if the naming did mislead other potential (majority) customers then the naming must be changed

    Based on this I decided to change it to Unlimited Expanding Storage VPS, this way users will understand that the vps is not just unlimited but it is unlimited expanding vps

    I think this way the naming is much more clear and avoid confusion

    Thanks for listening, the new name is way better, IMHO.

    Thanked by 1servarica_hani
  • IroniaIronia Member
    edited February 2022

    @plumberg said:

    @servarica_hani said:

    @PulsedMedia said:

    @servarica_hani said: Those plans are made mainly for appsumo

    I have managed to miss appsumo before. Doesn't bring up in my mind first a place to sell VPS at all, gets some sort of fiverr feel actually when you lookup VPS there. Interesting.

    Actually one of our users suggested doing offers there (didnt know it before) , then started looking around to understand their users
    after that I asked the appsumo team if my idea makes sense and they were excited so we started working on it

    When do you plan to launch in AppSumo?

    If you really meant "when" (as opposed to "what", which I think you got answered instead), I see them up now.

    AppSumo now has the small plan for $150/year. The base cost and specs seem to be identical to what you can from ServaRICA directly, so there's not much reason to go for the AppSumo deal specifically.

    It might be a little cheaper if you have Plus or credits, or if you expect to need to use the refund policy. But if you buy straight from ServaRICA, you can choose from more plans and you know that the chunk that would go to the AppSumo cut will instead go towards sustainability and future expansions.

    Thanked by 1servarica_hani
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