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What are you looking for when looking at online storage providers?
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What are you looking for when looking at online storage providers?

pbgbenpbgben Member, Host Rep
edited January 2015 in Help

Hey,

What are you looking for when looking at an online storage provider?

What do you want in terms of features?
Do you want an all-in-one package, or choose the features you need?
Do you want a simple ready to go solution like r1soft and owncloud or do you want a clean platform to setup how you like?
Do you want to pay per GB, or preset increments.100gb, 200gb, etc?
Are setup fees a deal breaker?
What sort of price are you happy paying?

Thanks for taking your time to help me better understand the market.

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Comments

  • For backup storage, the main thing I look for is reliability. I want a provider who will still be here in ten years' time. I want a provider I can feel confident about. I want a provider who will always keep my backups safe, in case I ever have to use them.

    Thanked by 1raindog308
  • s3 storage type platform would be nice even at a bit higher pricing, I currently use amazon S3 pushing to Glacier and online.net's cloud object storage for important data.

  • raindog308raindog308 Administrator, Veteran

    said: What are you looking for when looking at an online storage provider?

    Someone who has been in business for many years, is large enough to be publicly traded, and is reasonably certain not to vanish.

  • For me customer service is the biggest priority. As technology gets better, the product becomes just another commodity and what differentiates the companies that make a great partnership is open communication and understanding of what each party expects.

  • @raindog308 said:
    Someone who has been in business for many years, is large enough to be publicly traded, and is reasonably certain not to vanish.

    This.

  • pbgbenpbgben Member, Host Rep

    Thank you for replying to my questions,

    I see that as a backup provider you will want to have the assurance for longevity/financing for the company. But what about new start ups that have yet to get to that point?

  • Price tbh. I either use it to store some, err... "Linux ISOs" or use it as backups, and if it's really cheap (like Ramnode's 80GB for $15/yr) I would just get two of them on different nodes/locations and sync them.

    Even if the host disappears, I can just wget my backups from the main servers to another

  • pbgbenpbgben Member, Host Rep

    The plan I am working on is a EU based storage host with the low end market as a target

    So far the costs are looking to be around $2 per 100GB Storage plus a VPS plan.

  • TarZZ92TarZZ92 Member
    edited January 2015

    pbgben said: So far the costs are looking to be around $2 per 100GB Storage plus a VPS plan.

    we already have people who actually offer something similiar 500GB for $7 (vps)

    but if you had some large storage platform with deduplication (i use server 2012) it could be cost effective

  • I was looking for a storage provider with following services:

    • Gives me the ability to BUY hdds (RAID possibility would be also nice)
    • Colocates them so I can mount them via NFS/FTP etc. (settings over a panel or full VPS access)
    • And then charges me for traffic, electricity, colocation, profit and other service fees (sending the hdds to my location, changing the hdds in case of failure charging me for service + new hdd price, maybe buying back hdds with profit when I do not need them anymore etc.)

    Couldn't find one. Does anybody know if somethinkg like that exists?

  • @Baris - Yomura is beta'ing something exactly like this. It is based on a storage appliance, you pay a fee per month for the appliance and you can either buy disks, ship disks or rent them.

  • @MarkTurner said:
    Baris - Yomura is beta'ing something exactly like this. It is based on a storage appliance, you pay a fee per month for the appliance and you can either buy disks, ship disks or rent them.

    Nice to hear that! Is this a closed beta? If yes, when do you expect Yomura to release this to the public? Which locations will be available?

    I know that Yomora is discreet about their operations but if you have information to share you are very welcome.

  • @Baris - the end of the beta is this month, it has been on trial in London, Amsterdam, Atlanta and Los Angeles. Once the beta has finished then there will be a decision whether to make it commercially available.

    If you PM me your email, I will send you more info as it comes available

  • pbgbenpbgben Member, Host Rep
    edited January 2015

    @TarZZ92 said:

    I have noticed a few vps providers that offer a storage plan, however they max out at a few TB, our current setup allows 55TB per VPS. We are also providing a pay per use NFS share. at around $0.05 per gb (Price will likely change and we also discount larger ammouts)

    We have thought about DeDupe but are unsure of its reliability.

  • pbgben said: We have thought about DeDupe but are unsure of its reliability.

    carn't speak for Linux but for windows it's reliable and good

    http://i.imgur.com/axOadFB.png

  • @TarZZ92 said:
    carn't speak for Linux but for windows it's reliable and good
    http://i.imgur.com/axOadFB.png

    What are you using to manage that?

  • TarZZ92TarZZ92 Member
    edited January 2015

    0xdragon said: What are you using to manage that?

    just Windows data deduplication.

    granted most of the data is backups, but it's a huge saving whatever teh case, what's better it also works with VM's so you could be running like 5 VM's with same os and the space is only used by 1 full.

  • NyrNyr Community Contributor, Veteran

    pbgben said: our current setup allows 55TB per VPS

    Yeah, but you don't really offer any kind of reliability figures.

    If you are using RAID6 with 6TB disks for those 55TB offers... well, it's risky.

  • @Nyr - we offer up disks upto 48TB via ISCSI or NFS but thats backed by NetApp RAID on smaller FC disks so you get tonnes of performance and death of a disk doesn't paralyse the array whilst it rebuilds.

  • @pbgben 10GBP/TB is too expensive.

  • @William said:
    pbgben 10GBP/TB is too expensive.

    lol'd.

  • pbgbenpbgben Member, Host Rep

    @Nyr said:
    If you are using RAID6 with 6TB disks for those 55TB offers... well, it's risky.

    This is correct, RAID6 and 6TB drives. The rebuild time could be a few days going by some of the threads I'v just looked up.

    Would you prefer a mirrored setup? A RAID50 perhaps.

  • Whilst I've moved away from Co-Lo'd hardware to using dedi's storage, particularly backup storage is one area where I'm still considering using my own Kit co-lo'd.

    The problem with a lot of Dedi's and cloud storage is that the provider can delete your data for whatever reason E.g a payment fails or they claim you breached TOS/AUP.

    At least if it's on your own Drives they shouldn't be able to do that, as it's your hardware.

  • @0xdragon said:
    lol'd.

    What? I currently pay 6.5EUR/TB in NL.

  • @William said:

    No RAID or anything else on that, right?

  • vfusevfuse Member, Host Rep

    Transip has 2TB for 10 euro per month you do need a VPS to attach it too tho.

  • @0xdragon said:
    No RAID or anything else on that, right?

    ZFS RAIDZ2 - Thus RAID6. This price contains also a 480GB SSD as R and W cache.

  • pbgbenpbgben Member, Host Rep

    @William said:
    ZFS RAIDZ2 - Thus RAID6. This price contains also a 480GB SSD as R and W cache.

    Thats interesting, My pricing is borderline cost. (I rent hardware) I guess they own their hardware and use consumer grade drives.

    Would you mind letting us know who they are?

  • Myself. I rent the box with a Nforce reseller - Cost for the box with 20x2TB (36TB Z2), 1x480 SSD and 2x120GB SSD (Dual L5520, 36GB RAM) is 230EUR or ~6.4EUR per TB Z2 protected and cached.

  • pbgbenpbgben Member, Host Rep

    @William said:
    Myself. I rent the box with a Nforce reseller - Cost for the box with 20x2TB (36TB Z2), 1x480 SSD and 2x120GB SSD (Dual L5520, 36GB RAM) is 230EUR or ~6.4EUR per TB Z2 protected and cached.

    Thats a good deal you have, if I were to go with them today It would cost over 400EUR

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