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Ask HN: Cheap dedicated hosting options for side projects

122 points by webtechgal 10y ago

Hello all, I have a few side projects (all web apps) that would require sizable amounts of storage space (but not much of other resources) once I bring them live, so I've been searching for cheap dedicated hosting options. If huge space requirement was not a constraint, I'd say Digital Ocean (or other low-cost cloud services like Linode, Vultr etc.) would provide great bang for the buck, but I'm talking hundreds rather than tens of gigs of storage here at which levels, DO etc. would be way beyond my reach, and out of the question. After some research, I have found what I believe to be the cheapest dedicated box provider and before signing up there, I thought I'd run it by HN, for other opinions, suggestions etc. What do you all think? https://www.kimsufi.com/us/en/servers.xml

angry-hacker 10y ago
OpenShift by Red Hat. Upgrade to silver package, they just want your credit card but you don't have to pay anything if you run 3 small gears for an example. If you give them your CC, you get things like own domains etc. for free. For my simple side projects, it's perfect and easy to scale. I can't remember about storage costs, but you can find out!
- webtechgal 10y ago
  Thanks - I will check that out, though I seriously doubt if they would be offering anything like a dedi box with 500GB drive for less than $10/mo...
  - EduardoBautista 10y ago
    https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/ https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/ If you use exactly 500gb it would be be $15 a month for standard storage.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
andy 10y ago
I know what you mean about needing a solution with lots of storage. I have Linode servers, and I'm at 90% disk space usage on one of them. They just upgraded the ram on all servers, but what I really need is more disk space. I'm nowhere near hitting the bandwidth limit, just need more space.
mvip 10y ago
Assuming it's possible (i.e. you don't need a POSIX file system), your best bet might be to use an Object Store like S3. It will most likely be by far the most cost effective solution.
- webtechgal 10y ago
  Thanks. S3 would work fine for me (from a tech perspective), but the question is, would it offer ~500 GB storage for under $10/mo?
  - mvip 10y ago
    According to their calculator[1], it's $15. Less than $10 seems unreasonably low for what you're asking. [1] https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/ https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/
    - chrisgoman 10y ago
      You can use S3FS (https://github.com/s3fs-fuse/s3fs-fuse https://github.com/s3fs-fuse/s3fs-fuse) to mount your buckets and make it look like just another directory using /etc/fstab
davidverhasselt 10y ago
- If latency isn't an issue you could store your things on Backblaze [1] which is by far the cheapest storage I've found. - For my high-storage requirements I rent a dedicated Hetzner server with 2x3TB disks for around 30 euro/month [2] [1] https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-storage.html https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-storage.html [2] https://robot.your-server.de/order/market/country/DE https://robot.your-server.de/order/market/country/DE
- DanielStraight 10y ago
  Since the OP indicated elsewhere that the storage need not be local on the machine, Backblaze is almost certainly the best answer. 500 GB of Backblaze B2 storage is $2.50 / month Pair that with a $5 DigitalOcean droplet and the need is met for a grand total of $7.50 / month.
  - webtechgal 10y ago
    Wow!!! DO being a favorite of mine, I will definitely try to explore this. My concern, however, is what about the bandwidth between DO and Backblaze? How would that count/work?
    - snuxoll 10y ago
      Bandwidth into both B2 and DigitalOcean is free, bandwidth OUT of them is metered (or in the case of DO you get a bucket of bandwidth to start and then it's metered past that bucket).
      - jazoom 10y ago
        Also there appears to be no way in the dashboard of DO to see bandwidth usage. I don't know where they say it's metered after that, because they just slowed down the speed severely when my server went over, rendering it useless for its purpose without warning.
        10y ago
AnkhMorporkian 10y ago
Here's an option you might not have considered, but might be applicable, depending on the read/write speeds you need from those hundreds of gigabytes of data. Amazon has cloud drive, which costs something like 50 bucks a year, and has unlimited storage. The neat thing is someone created a FUSE file system called acd_cli that allows you to use the cloud drive as if it were a normal hard drive. The speeds aren't too shabby either; I easily get 150MB/s up and down on my dedicated server, and response times are snappy. Additionally, you can create a unionfs mount so that writes are instant, and you sync new files on a regular schedule. Of course, that might not be applicable to your use case, but I use mine for many things. I have a plex server running using that with over 13TB of videos, and it works flawlessly. It allows me to run a full plex server with unlimited storage for 20 bucks a month.
- dhruvkar 10y ago
  I have the same issue. Running a Plex server (~6TB) at home, and thinking I need to put my media in a more accessible location. Are you using Amazon Drive as the one true source and syncing it locally to use with your Plex Server? Or are you pulling/streaming directly from ACD?
  - AnkhMorporkian 10y ago
    My setup is a little convoluted. I've found that using the write mount really slows me down, so I use a unionfs mount with the writes going to the local hard drive, and the cloud drive being the primary read source. Given that it's unionfs though, anything that I haven't synced will be read from the hard drive. So the order goes: Sonarr/CouchPotato -> Local Hard Drive -> Amazon Cloud Drive -> Plex. I stream directly off the cloud drive for any file older than an hour, as that's my upload interval.
    - dhruvkar 10y ago
      nice. so you read from ACD, because you're mainly writing to local? Or is there another reason for NOT reading from local? also, does local completely mirror ACD, or have you found a way around that?
zazibar 10y ago
I highly recommend Scaleway. https://www.scaleway.com/ https://www.scaleway.com/
- DanielStraight 10y ago
  Looks like with their lowest tier bare metal server + 450 GB additional storage the total would be 11.99 Euros per month or $13.28 USD. And there wouldn't be transfer cost between server / storage.
Something1234 10y ago
You could go with hetzner. They recently had a special for a 64GB with 2x4TB hard drives for $54, and do a bunch of VMs on it.
walrus01 10y ago
kimsufi = OVH , just FYI.
- webtechgal 10y ago
  Thanks, yes, I actually found them via OVH only, but SO much cheaper than OVH!! The configs offered are much inferior, but okay for my requirements.
  - KJKingJ 10y ago
    They also have their "SoYouStart" brand which sits halfway between their Kimsufi offerings and their normal OVH offerings. It's also worth checking out online.net - like OVH, they also have a decent range of decently-spec'd-but-cheap servers on offer. Unlike OVH, they only have a single brand, but within that they go all the way from lightweight, ultra-cheap Atom-based servers all the way up to multi-CPU beasts.
  - walrus01 10y ago
    The primary difference being that kimsufi has basically no support, you're wholly responsible for whatever OS you're running on the box. The only support is 'wipe and start over'. If you're confident and OK with that it's a lower cost option.
    - AznHisoka 10y ago
      To be honest, that's also the same support level as the higher plans like SoYouStart and OVH. They don't manage or administrate your servers for you. You need knowledge. The good news is: it doesn't take much to be able to manage everything on your own.
      - webtechgal 10y ago
        So very true and I doubt if ANY service with such low costs would provide any support beyond hardware/network failure. However, speaking for myself, once I have the trusty ol' CentOS 6.7 and an ssh login, Barbara is my aunt, so this works for me. :-)
Hates_ 10y ago
I use Kimsufi for a load of small side projects. AFAIK they are decommissioned OVH servers. You lose RAID as well as some other features like fail-over IPs.
- webtechgal 10y ago
  That's great, thanks!! How about uptime and support/response issues? Of course, I am not expecting any fancy support for < $10/mo., but just to know, have you had any issues and 1st-hand experiences?
  - kraftman 10y ago
    I've had a few boxes from them for a few years, they've been pretty solid. Once I had a server go offline, I got an email from them saying they'd detected an issue, another 10 minutes later saying they'd found a problem with a network connector and it was fixed. I bought an extra server for a month once and the automated system had some issues which meant I didn't get the login info, took them about a day to fix it and get back to me.
  - shimon_e 10y ago
    Use their VPS. Not oversold. Latest CPU. ECC RAM. RAID storage. Was $3/m with their 30% off promo recently. Put a single service on a single VPS. Order a few extra. Will make testing things much easier.
  - Hates_ 10y ago
    Uptime has been 100% as far as I can tell and their help and response to issues have been good too. They were really good assisting me in getting drive replaced on my main OVH server as well as setting up the failover IPs between that and a backup Kimsufi one (that was before they stopped offering failover to kimsufi ones).
andybak 10y ago
I use https://backupsy.com/ https://backupsy.com/ - essentially a cheap VPS with slow but generous storage options. I think ovh also has an option for 'lots of space but don't worry about the other things'.
HaseebR7 10y ago
The one's listed here are great. Been using one for over a year now. http://oneprovider.com/dedicated-servers/paris-france http://oneprovider.com/dedicated-servers/paris-france
Eun 10y ago
I am using https://online.net https://online.net, works good so far.
- jagger27 10y ago
  If you can put up with the latency to France.
  - webtechgal 10y ago
    Looks quite promising, and well within my price range (under $10) too. In fact, their Personal Range appears to be cheaper and config-wise superior to even Kimsufi!! I will surely check this out. @jagger27, for a WAHM from India, be it France/US/UK or whatever, they're all the same. :-)
zzcworld 10y ago
In the U.S, you can use WholeSaleInternet, Joe's Datacenter and Nocix, those servers are dirt cheap.
- jackson23 10y ago
  Be careful, looks like these may be owned by the same person and are all located in KC MO. The prices look good, but some research should be done. Nocix is/was datashack. https://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1559810 https://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1559810
benologist 10y ago
If you're already paying Dropbox there's a terabyte of space that might be useful with bonus backups, versioning and undeleting, a CLI too: http://www.dropboxwiki.com/tips-and-tricks/using-the-official-dropbox-command-line-interface-cli http://www.dropboxwiki.com/tips-and-tricks/using-the-officia...
skrowl 10y ago
OVH is what we use for our side stuff. Pretty good as long as you never need support. Getting support was very slow.
chintan39 10y ago
I have been using CloudAtCost for almost 2 years. Works fine for side projects or experiments.Also has one time fee option
sandis 10y ago
I've been quite happy with Delimiter [1]. Cheap, but relatively beefy dedicated servers and S3-compatible object storage. You can use promo code B6NFT66YU7ZN to get 6% off in perpetuity (disclaimer: that's my affiliate code). [1] https://www.delimiter.com https://www.delimiter.com
- ivank 10y ago
  My experience with Delimiter involved sending them a hard drive, not getting it installed in the "slot hosting" VPS I paid for, not getting any support tickets answered, then eventually getting my drive back three weeks later after complaining on a forum. Said forum then banned a Delimiter sales guy, partly for posting a barcode with my home address and other PI on it. They are literally the worst hosting business I've ever dealt with, and I've used many of the low-end providers. OVH and online.net are miles better.
  - sandis 10y ago
    When was that? Just curious, because I did see some bad reviews before deciding to go with Delimiter, but also kept hearing that things have improved in recent years. Online.net (specifically their Scaleway brand) I've been happy with as well. Their support has a quick turnaround, but answers have been unrelated to what I've been asking.
    - ivank 10y ago
      That happened in April 2016. Unrelated to my issues, they also had a very long HVAC outage earlier this year. So I'm not sure anything has improved at Delimiter/Yomura.
- pyvek 10y ago
  Something to know about before going with delimiter – https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/4hx9w4/eve_online_guild_moves_voice_chat_to_a_new_host/ https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/4hx9w4/eve_online...
berns 10y ago
OVH Public Cloud Object Storage. It's $ 0.01 per GB for storage and transfer. Triple replicated with datacenters in Europe and Canada. It uses Open Stack Swift which has a nice api and tools.
Bedon292 10y ago
Just chiming in with my experience. I have several different servers for personal projects on various OVH properties. So Kimsufi, SoYouStart, and OVH proper. They have all been great. The VPS option at OVH was nice too. 100Mbit connection, several TB of bandwidth for $5 / month. Never ran into any issues with their services, and will continue to use them for everything. Much better deal than anything else I have found.
joshbaptiste 10y ago
The best bang for buck I have found so far for large storage hosting is the slot hosting option from http://www.delimiter.com http://www.delimiter.com, where you mail in your own hard-drive and they provide you with a local VPS that can mount it in an Atlanta data center for $100/yr. I sent a 6TB drive. I then run other cheap VPS's (usually on the east coast for lower latency) that mount the drive via sshfs.
seanwilson 10y ago
Are these static websites or do the apps need to write to the storage space?
- webtechgal 10y ago
  The sites/apps will be writing (as well as reading) ALL the time... One of them is a (proprietary) web crawler that will crawl and archive certain types of web resources. (Mainly RSS/XML feeds). Then, another one will crawl/archive URLs, take a screen shot of the URLs too and store them as gif/jpeg/png files.
- collyw 10y ago
  What sort of static website would need that much storage?
  - icebraining 10y ago
    Something like a self-hosted pyvideo.org would probably take a few TBs.
    - collyw 10y ago
      Even that has a search option. I suppose you might want to host a large number of big downloads.
      - icebraining 10y ago
        You can have search using only browser-side JS, by generating a static index: http://10consulting.com/2013/03/06/jekyll-and-lunr-js-static-websites-with-powerful-full-text-search-using-javascript/ http://10consulting.com/2013/03/06/jekyll-and-lunr-js-static...
retrack 10y ago
Almost everyone here suggest Object Storage which I too think is the best option for your case. Then you can modulate computing power or even technology (VPS, cloud instance, PaaS, or containers) as you will. Some providers like us (I am CEO at Exoscale) bill the compute by the minute and allow to resize the direct attached disk even on small 5$/mo 512mb instances.
known 10y ago
Low end dedicated servers/virtual private servers http://www.lowendbox.com/ http://www.lowendbox.com/
aantix 10y ago
VPSDime (http://vpsdime.com/ http://vpsdime.com/). Their largest VPS package is 4 CPU 36GB Memory 180GB SSD Space 12TB Traffic Limit 10Gbit Connection $42.00/mo. Lot of room for multiple sites.
- forthefuture 10y ago
  That's both much less storage than he needs and much more expensive.
fbcpck 10y ago
I frequently lurk on LowEndTalk forums; if you don't mind using vps from not-so-known providers, these are the two best storage vps deals on it: » Time4VPS (https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/85707/ https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/85707/) 1TB Storage for €48 bienially. Double the storage for double price. » ZXHost (https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/85803/ https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/85803/) 1TB Storage for €45 annually. Offer has ended though; but they might do it again in the future so I'll leave it here. — Otherwise, go for kimsufi/ovh/soyoustart/hetzner/scaleway special offer dedicated servers. They are the cheapest you can get for non-random providers.
- kyriakos 10y ago
  have experience with OVH and Hetzner both companies offer a stable service and their prices look too good to be real (and yet they are real)
- webtechgal 10y ago
  Wow!! I actually have a 20GB instance with Time4VPS, that I had found via an ad on LowEndTalk last year. I think I paid some Euro 9 or something for the WHOLE YEAR!! Other than an annoying glitch that causes the space allocation to drop down to 10GB instead of 20GB at random, it has been working quite well too. However, I didn't know they had had the 1TB offer - I'll put in a ticket there asking them to let me know if/when it comes up again. Thanks for the info.
  - time4vps 10y ago
    We have those offers (high volume storage servers) for some time now and they are not going to disappear.
icebraining 10y ago
TransIP sells you DigitalOcean-like VPSs, but also allow you to attach multi-TB NAS drives to them for a few bucks more. I've been a happy customer with a 2TB drive for a few years. https://www.transip.eu/vps/big-storage/ https://www.transip.eu/vps/big-storage/
Veratyr 10y ago
Depends more on your usage requirements: - If you're basically just doing a backup and not reading data very often, Backblaze B2 is a good choice, as storage only costs 0.005$/GB (1TB is $5). However if you're reading kinda often, I'd recommend against it, as it's not the fastest to read and bandwidth is 5c/GB (it's mainly intended for backup use cases). - If you're doing a backup and REALLY not reading data very often, Online.net's C14 is a good choice. Storage is only EUR 0.002/GB (EUR 2/TB) but reading/writing (known as "operation" on their pages) costs EUR 0.01/GB. - If you need a decent/low latency network, I'd pay for Google Cloud Storage or something similar. - If you're doing basically anything else, I'd recommend a server from Kimsufi (as you've found), SoYouStart, Online.net, Hetzner or OVH. - If you're fine with something _really_ low end, another user pointed out time4vps.eu which offers the lowest cost online storage I've seen (EUR 0.002/GB) with RAM, a CPU and bandwidth attached.
zaidf 10y ago
ovh.com
coot_ 10y ago
I use: https://indiehosters.net https://indiehosters.net If you care about privacy you will land in the right hands, and you will support an interesting project on its own: http://www.wired.com/2014/11/indie-hosters/ http://www.wired.com/2014/11/indie-hosters/
Raed667 10y ago
I use OVH SSD VPS (the cheapest offer) and it has been working nicely for me. However if you select your server to be in a region requests from other regions might be a bit slow.
gravypod 10y ago
If you don't mind a sketchy company Volume Drive has great prices, just horrible service.
- joshmn 10y ago
  > sketchy company Understatement of the year. For those who are out of the loop, webhostingtalk.com has some great reads. Get some popcorn.
  - gravypod 10y ago
    Didn't they just leave 300+ servers at a datacenter?
- qmr 10y ago
  Hah, they're still in business? Mine was one of the "stolen" servers from their old colocation provider or whatever whenever drama with them went down ~3 years ago.
nwilkens 10y ago
At https://MNX.io https://MNX.io we introduced an SSD cached storage VPS server -- 500GB starting at $7/month, available up to 40TB at $15/TB.
- joshmn 10y ago
  I remember when you guys were first starting out :) I think we emailed back and forth. Nice to see you guys are here!
hatmer 10y ago
Github let's you host static pages for free. Mega gives you 50GB free storage. Amazon EC2 has a nano option that costs very little.
fapjacks 10y ago
I use and recommend both OVH and Hetzner.
cweagans 10y ago
FYI, DigitalOcean is rolling out expandable block storage summer 2016 (so any day now), so that might be a good way to go. Not a lot of information, but keep an eye on https://www.digitalocean.com/features/storage/ https://www.digitalocean.com/features/storage/. You may be able to ask support to manually add you to the beta if you need it right now. DigitalOcean is really good about going out of their way to win your business. Full disclosure: I have no relationship to DO other than being a happy customer. If you're looking at mostly static assets though, why not just upload them to S3 and serve them directly from there (or via a Cloudfront distribution)? EC2 boxes are fairly inexpensive as well, and there's all kind of automation tools for provisioning your AWS resources + configuring them.
- chrisgoman 10y ago
  +1 on DigitalOcean with Block Storage. Currently using DO with Amazon S3 mounted using /etc/fstab via S3FS https://github.com/s3fs-fuse/s3fs-fuse https://github.com/s3fs-fuse/s3fs-fuse (which has eventual consistency but if you want cheap)
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
bcheung 10y ago
I use OVH. Kimsufi is basically the same company. I think it is their low end alias or white label. I think Kimsufi limits you to 100Mbps which might not be enough bandwidth speed if you plan on server video or other large files to a bunch of people at once. OVH gives you a 1 Gbps unlimited pipe included. https://www.ovh.com/us/dedicated-servers/storage/ https://www.ovh.com/us/dedicated-servers/storage/
quicksilver03 10y ago
Kimsufi's problem is the lack of redundancy, if the single drive on a box dies then you're not going to see your data again. However, given the low price you could rent them in pairs and replicate the data using something like DRBD. Depending on your comfort level, this can be a very viable and cost effective option, or a system administration nightmare. If it's the latter, then definitely look into an object storage solution if your applications are compatible with that. By the way, I've written an ebook which tries to help people make sense of the various hosting options available on the market today, perhaps it can be useful to you. The book site is https://www.hostingforappdevelopers.com https://www.hostingforappdevelopers.com
- webtechgal 10y ago
  Mine are mainly experimental apps, so the data redundancy is not really that important, but yes, at some point in time, if the need arises, I can get another box like you said, and may be just rsync everything via a daily cron job or something I suppose.
- Gustomaximus 10y ago
  >given the low price you could rent them in pairs and replicate the data using something like DRBD I'd be worried with this drive 2 is sitting 30cm from drive 1 so if something physical happened at the site itself your data is gone vs multi site coverage.
shaunpud 10y ago
Have you checked out ServerHub? They are very generous with storage; http://serverhub.com/vps/ssd-cached http://serverhub.com/vps/ssd-cached
jbardnz 10y ago
Seen as you already mention Vultr as an option they actually have dedicated block storage plans: https://www.vultr.com/pricing/blockstorage/ https://www.vultr.com/pricing/blockstorage/ A 500GB SSD is $50/month which seems fairly reasonable. You can use it directly with a cheap VPS from them as well.
- webtechgal 10y ago
  That's useful to know, but as mentioned in my original post, what I basically require is a dedi box and since Kimsufi is offering one with 500GB for under $10/mo., the Vultr offer won't make much commercial sense to me. Thanks anyway.
nreece 10y ago
Check out Dediserve - https://dediserve.com https://dediserve.com. They let you customise the resources (including SSD and NAS storage) as per your needs. Moreover, their performance and support are great too.
ahazred8ta 10y ago
"would require sizable amounts of storage space (but not much of other resources)" Self-hosting would be your best option if your bandwidth needs are modest. Your data is 'small' enough to fit on a local drive.
leandot 10y ago
I use kimsufi to host a side project and so far they have been really good. Switched away from Hetzner. Running multiple dockerized applications on a dedicated host is a good way to save on running costs until things pick up speed.
gargravarr 10y ago
Kimsufi are a great low-cost provider, I ran an Atom dedi with a 1TB disk with them for 2 years at around £12 a month. Never had any problems - great bandwidth to move data around, mostly used the big disk for offsite backups. However, an important consideration - they don't adjust their pricing for existing customers or allow the hardware to be upgraded. Around the 2-year mark, they dropped the price for the same server to just £3 a month and doubled the RAM. I was told if I wanted it, I'd have to give up my current server and move everything to a brand-new one. They wouldn't drop the price, and when I asked about doubling the RAM, was told it wasn't an option. They then put the price of my dedi up not a month later. I cancelled the server and have run my own hardware since then. Good for a specific use, but as the low price implies, there is no option to scale in future.
- webtechgal 10y ago
  Thanks for all this info. Just out of curiosity, when they offered the same config as your £12/mo box for £3/mo and refused to reduce your billing, could you not have simply bought the cheaper one, taken a snapshot of the existing server, transferred it over to the new one and discontinued the older one?
  - gargravarr 10y ago
    I couldn't have done so using the KS dashboard, for example. As it was Linux, I could have cloned the machine fairly easily, but it seemed silly to me to go to all that trouble, essentially throwing away the original server and starting again. At the time, my need for a hosted machine was decreasing so I didn't want to expend much effort anyway.
BrianT 10y ago
Delimiter's full-ha cloud gives you 250GB space, 1 CPU, 1GB RAM for $6/month. You could add more CPU/more RAM for just a few pennies. Disk space scales to 50TB per disk quite cheaply. https://cc.delimiter.com/cart/cloud-resource-pool/ https://cc.delimiter.com/cart/cloud-resource-pool/ Another option is ObjSpace (S3 compatible storage) but that would require you to run S3FS or similar. http://delimiter.com/objspace-object-storage/ http://delimiter.com/objspace-object-storage/ [disclaimer I work for Delimiter]
haseeb1431 10y ago
Is there any way to get the crux of this whole discussion instead of going through each comment?

122 points by webtechgal 10y ago

angry-hacker 10y ago

OpenShift by Red Hat. Upgrade to silver package, they just want your credit card but you don't have to pay anything if you run 3 small gears for an example. If you give them your CC, you get things like own domains etc. for free. For my simple side projects, it's perfect and easy to scale. I can't remember about storage costs, but you can find out!

webtechgal 10y ago
Thanks - I will check that out, though I seriously doubt if they would be offering anything like a dedi box with 500GB drive for less than $10/mo...
- EduardoBautista 10y ago
  https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/ https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/ If you use exactly 500gb it would be be $15 a month for standard storage.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

andy 10y ago

I know what you mean about needing a solution with lots of storage. I have Linode servers, and I'm at 90% disk space usage on one of them. They just upgraded the ram on all servers, but what I really need is more disk space. I'm nowhere near hitting the bandwidth limit, just need more space.

mvip 10y ago

Assuming it's possible (i.e. you don't need a POSIX file system), your best bet might be to use an Object Store like S3. It will most likely be by far the most cost effective solution.

webtechgal 10y ago
Thanks. S3 would work fine for me (from a tech perspective), but the question is, would it offer ~500 GB storage for under $10/mo?
- mvip 10y ago
  According to their calculator[1], it's $15. Less than $10 seems unreasonably low for what you're asking. [1] https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/ https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/
  - chrisgoman 10y ago
    You can use S3FS (https://github.com/s3fs-fuse/s3fs-fuse https://github.com/s3fs-fuse/s3fs-fuse) to mount your buckets and make it look like just another directory using /etc/fstab

davidverhasselt 10y ago

- If latency isn't an issue you could store your things on Backblaze [1] which is by far the cheapest storage I've found. - For my high-storage requirements I rent a dedicated Hetzner server with 2x3TB disks for around 30 euro/month [2] [1] https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-storage.html https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-storage.html [2] https://robot.your-server.de/order/market/country/DE https://robot.your-server.de/order/market/country/DE

DanielStraight 10y ago
Since the OP indicated elsewhere that the storage need not be local on the machine, Backblaze is almost certainly the best answer. 500 GB of Backblaze B2 storage is $2.50 / month Pair that with a $5 DigitalOcean droplet and the need is met for a grand total of $7.50 / month.
- webtechgal 10y ago
  Wow!!! DO being a favorite of mine, I will definitely try to explore this. My concern, however, is what about the bandwidth between DO and Backblaze? How would that count/work?
  - snuxoll 10y ago
    Bandwidth into both B2 and DigitalOcean is free, bandwidth OUT of them is metered (or in the case of DO you get a bucket of bandwidth to start and then it's metered past that bucket).
    - jazoom 10y ago
      Also there appears to be no way in the dashboard of DO to see bandwidth usage. I don't know where they say it's metered after that, because they just slowed down the speed severely when my server went over, rendering it useless for its purpose without warning.
      - 10y ago

AnkhMorporkian 10y ago

Here's an option you might not have considered, but might be applicable, depending on the read/write speeds you need from those hundreds of gigabytes of data. Amazon has cloud drive, which costs something like 50 bucks a year, and has unlimited storage. The neat thing is someone created a FUSE file system called acd_cli that allows you to use the cloud drive as if it were a normal hard drive. The speeds aren't too shabby either; I easily get 150MB/s up and down on my dedicated server, and response times are snappy. Additionally, you can create a unionfs mount so that writes are instant, and you sync new files on a regular schedule. Of course, that might not be applicable to your use case, but I use mine for many things. I have a plex server running using that with over 13TB of videos, and it works flawlessly. It allows me to run a full plex server with unlimited storage for 20 bucks a month.

dhruvkar 10y ago
I have the same issue. Running a Plex server (~6TB) at home, and thinking I need to put my media in a more accessible location. Are you using Amazon Drive as the one true source and syncing it locally to use with your Plex Server? Or are you pulling/streaming directly from ACD?
- AnkhMorporkian 10y ago
  My setup is a little convoluted. I've found that using the write mount really slows me down, so I use a unionfs mount with the writes going to the local hard drive, and the cloud drive being the primary read source. Given that it's unionfs though, anything that I haven't synced will be read from the hard drive. So the order goes: Sonarr/CouchPotato -> Local Hard Drive -> Amazon Cloud Drive -> Plex. I stream directly off the cloud drive for any file older than an hour, as that's my upload interval.
  - dhruvkar 10y ago
    nice. so you read from ACD, because you're mainly writing to local? Or is there another reason for NOT reading from local? also, does local completely mirror ACD, or have you found a way around that?

zazibar 10y ago

I highly recommend Scaleway. https://www.scaleway.com/ https://www.scaleway.com/

DanielStraight 10y ago
Looks like with their lowest tier bare metal server + 450 GB additional storage the total would be 11.99 Euros per month or $13.28 USD. And there wouldn't be transfer cost between server / storage.

Something1234 10y ago

You could go with hetzner. They recently had a special for a 64GB with 2x4TB hard drives for $54, and do a bunch of VMs on it.

walrus01 10y ago

kimsufi = OVH , just FYI.

webtechgal 10y ago
Thanks, yes, I actually found them via OVH only, but SO much cheaper than OVH!! The configs offered are much inferior, but okay for my requirements.
- KJKingJ 10y ago
  They also have their "SoYouStart" brand which sits halfway between their Kimsufi offerings and their normal OVH offerings. It's also worth checking out online.net - like OVH, they also have a decent range of decently-spec'd-but-cheap servers on offer. Unlike OVH, they only have a single brand, but within that they go all the way from lightweight, ultra-cheap Atom-based servers all the way up to multi-CPU beasts.
- walrus01 10y ago
  The primary difference being that kimsufi has basically no support, you're wholly responsible for whatever OS you're running on the box. The only support is 'wipe and start over'. If you're confident and OK with that it's a lower cost option.
  - AznHisoka 10y ago
    To be honest, that's also the same support level as the higher plans like SoYouStart and OVH. They don't manage or administrate your servers for you. You need knowledge. The good news is: it doesn't take much to be able to manage everything on your own.
    - webtechgal 10y ago
      So very true and I doubt if ANY service with such low costs would provide any support beyond hardware/network failure. However, speaking for myself, once I have the trusty ol' CentOS 6.7 and an ssh login, Barbara is my aunt, so this works for me. :-)

Hates_ 10y ago

I use Kimsufi for a load of small side projects. AFAIK they are decommissioned OVH servers. You lose RAID as well as some other features like fail-over IPs.

webtechgal 10y ago
That's great, thanks!! How about uptime and support/response issues? Of course, I am not expecting any fancy support for < $10/mo., but just to know, have you had any issues and 1st-hand experiences?
- kraftman 10y ago
  I've had a few boxes from them for a few years, they've been pretty solid. Once I had a server go offline, I got an email from them saying they'd detected an issue, another 10 minutes later saying they'd found a problem with a network connector and it was fixed. I bought an extra server for a month once and the automated system had some issues which meant I didn't get the login info, took them about a day to fix it and get back to me.
- shimon_e 10y ago
  Use their VPS. Not oversold. Latest CPU. ECC RAM. RAID storage. Was $3/m with their 30% off promo recently. Put a single service on a single VPS. Order a few extra. Will make testing things much easier.
- Hates_ 10y ago
  Uptime has been 100% as far as I can tell and their help and response to issues have been good too. They were really good assisting me in getting drive replaced on my main OVH server as well as setting up the failover IPs between that and a backup Kimsufi one (that was before they stopped offering failover to kimsufi ones).

andybak 10y ago

I use https://backupsy.com/ https://backupsy.com/ - essentially a cheap VPS with slow but generous storage options. I think ovh also has an option for 'lots of space but don't worry about the other things'.

HaseebR7 10y ago

The one's listed here are great. Been using one for over a year now. http://oneprovider.com/dedicated-servers/paris-france http://oneprovider.com/dedicated-servers/paris-france

Eun 10y ago

I am using https://online.net https://online.net, works good so far.

jagger27 10y ago
If you can put up with the latency to France.
- webtechgal 10y ago
  Looks quite promising, and well within my price range (under $10) too. In fact, their Personal Range appears to be cheaper and config-wise superior to even Kimsufi!! I will surely check this out. @jagger27, for a WAHM from India, be it France/US/UK or whatever, they're all the same. :-)

zzcworld 10y ago

In the U.S, you can use WholeSaleInternet, Joe's Datacenter and Nocix, those servers are dirt cheap.

jackson23 10y ago
Be careful, looks like these may be owned by the same person and are all located in KC MO. The prices look good, but some research should be done. Nocix is/was datashack. https://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1559810 https://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1559810

benologist 10y ago

If you're already paying Dropbox there's a terabyte of space that might be useful with bonus backups, versioning and undeleting, a CLI too: http://www.dropboxwiki.com/tips-and-tricks/using-the-official-dropbox-command-line-interface-cli http://www.dropboxwiki.com/tips-and-tricks/using-the-officia...

skrowl 10y ago

OVH is what we use for our side stuff. Pretty good as long as you never need support. Getting support was very slow.

chintan39 10y ago

I have been using CloudAtCost for almost 2 years. Works fine for side projects or experiments.Also has one time fee option

sandis 10y ago

I've been quite happy with Delimiter [1]. Cheap, but relatively beefy dedicated servers and S3-compatible object storage. You can use promo code B6NFT66YU7ZN to get 6% off in perpetuity (disclaimer: that's my affiliate code). [1] https://www.delimiter.com https://www.delimiter.com

ivank 10y ago
My experience with Delimiter involved sending them a hard drive, not getting it installed in the "slot hosting" VPS I paid for, not getting any support tickets answered, then eventually getting my drive back three weeks later after complaining on a forum. Said forum then banned a Delimiter sales guy, partly for posting a barcode with my home address and other PI on it. They are literally the worst hosting business I've ever dealt with, and I've used many of the low-end providers. OVH and online.net are miles better.
- sandis 10y ago
  When was that? Just curious, because I did see some bad reviews before deciding to go with Delimiter, but also kept hearing that things have improved in recent years. Online.net (specifically their Scaleway brand) I've been happy with as well. Their support has a quick turnaround, but answers have been unrelated to what I've been asking.
  - ivank 10y ago
    That happened in April 2016. Unrelated to my issues, they also had a very long HVAC outage earlier this year. So I'm not sure anything has improved at Delimiter/Yomura.
pyvek 10y ago
Something to know about before going with delimiter – https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/4hx9w4/eve_online_guild_moves_voice_chat_to_a_new_host/ https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/4hx9w4/eve_online...

berns 10y ago

OVH Public Cloud Object Storage. It's $ 0.01 per GB for storage and transfer. Triple replicated with datacenters in Europe and Canada. It uses Open Stack Swift which has a nice api and tools.

Bedon292 10y ago

Just chiming in with my experience. I have several different servers for personal projects on various OVH properties. So Kimsufi, SoYouStart, and OVH proper. They have all been great. The VPS option at OVH was nice too. 100Mbit connection, several TB of bandwidth for $5 / month. Never ran into any issues with their services, and will continue to use them for everything. Much better deal than anything else I have found.

joshbaptiste 10y ago

The best bang for buck I have found so far for large storage hosting is the slot hosting option from http://www.delimiter.com http://www.delimiter.com, where you mail in your own hard-drive and they provide you with a local VPS that can mount it in an Atlanta data center for $100/yr. I sent a 6TB drive. I then run other cheap VPS's (usually on the east coast for lower latency) that mount the drive via sshfs.

seanwilson 10y ago

Are these static websites or do the apps need to write to the storage space?

webtechgal 10y ago
The sites/apps will be writing (as well as reading) ALL the time... One of them is a (proprietary) web crawler that will crawl and archive certain types of web resources. (Mainly RSS/XML feeds). Then, another one will crawl/archive URLs, take a screen shot of the URLs too and store them as gif/jpeg/png files.
collyw 10y ago
What sort of static website would need that much storage?
- icebraining 10y ago
  Something like a self-hosted pyvideo.org would probably take a few TBs.
  - collyw 10y ago
    Even that has a search option. I suppose you might want to host a large number of big downloads.
    - icebraining 10y ago
      You can have search using only browser-side JS, by generating a static index: http://10consulting.com/2013/03/06/jekyll-and-lunr-js-static-websites-with-powerful-full-text-search-using-javascript/ http://10consulting.com/2013/03/06/jekyll-and-lunr-js-static...

retrack 10y ago

Almost everyone here suggest Object Storage which I too think is the best option for your case. Then you can modulate computing power or even technology (VPS, cloud instance, PaaS, or containers) as you will. Some providers like us (I am CEO at Exoscale) bill the compute by the minute and allow to resize the direct attached disk even on small 5$/mo 512mb instances.

known 10y ago

Low end dedicated servers/virtual private servers http://www.lowendbox.com/ http://www.lowendbox.com/

aantix 10y ago

VPSDime (http://vpsdime.com/ http://vpsdime.com/). Their largest VPS package is 4 CPU 36GB Memory 180GB SSD Space 12TB Traffic Limit 10Gbit Connection $42.00/mo. Lot of room for multiple sites.

forthefuture 10y ago
That's both much less storage than he needs and much more expensive.

fbcpck 10y ago

I frequently lurk on LowEndTalk forums; if you don't mind using vps from not-so-known providers, these are the two best storage vps deals on it: » Time4VPS (https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/85707/ https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/85707/) 1TB Storage for €48 bienially. Double the storage for double price. » ZXHost (https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/85803/ https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/85803/) 1TB Storage for €45 annually. Offer has ended though; but they might do it again in the future so I'll leave it here. — Otherwise, go for kimsufi/ovh/soyoustart/hetzner/scaleway special offer dedicated servers. They are the cheapest you can get for non-random providers.

kyriakos 10y ago
have experience with OVH and Hetzner both companies offer a stable service and their prices look too good to be real (and yet they are real)
webtechgal 10y ago
Wow!! I actually have a 20GB instance with Time4VPS, that I had found via an ad on LowEndTalk last year. I think I paid some Euro 9 or something for the WHOLE YEAR!! Other than an annoying glitch that causes the space allocation to drop down to 10GB instead of 20GB at random, it has been working quite well too. However, I didn't know they had had the 1TB offer - I'll put in a ticket there asking them to let me know if/when it comes up again. Thanks for the info.
- time4vps 10y ago
  We have those offers (high volume storage servers) for some time now and they are not going to disappear.

icebraining 10y ago

TransIP sells you DigitalOcean-like VPSs, but also allow you to attach multi-TB NAS drives to them for a few bucks more. I've been a happy customer with a 2TB drive for a few years. https://www.transip.eu/vps/big-storage/ https://www.transip.eu/vps/big-storage/

Veratyr 10y ago

Depends more on your usage requirements: - If you're basically just doing a backup and not reading data very often, Backblaze B2 is a good choice, as storage only costs 0.005$/GB (1TB is $5). However if you're reading kinda often, I'd recommend against it, as it's not the fastest to read and bandwidth is 5c/GB (it's mainly intended for backup use cases). - If you're doing a backup and REALLY not reading data very often, Online.net's C14 is a good choice. Storage is only EUR 0.002/GB (EUR 2/TB) but reading/writing (known as "operation" on their pages) costs EUR 0.01/GB. - If you need a decent/low latency network, I'd pay for Google Cloud Storage or something similar. - If you're doing basically anything else, I'd recommend a server from Kimsufi (as you've found), SoYouStart, Online.net, Hetzner or OVH. - If you're fine with something _really_ low end, another user pointed out time4vps.eu which offers the lowest cost online storage I've seen (EUR 0.002/GB) with RAM, a CPU and bandwidth attached.

zaidf 10y ago

ovh.com

coot_ 10y ago

I use: https://indiehosters.net https://indiehosters.net If you care about privacy you will land in the right hands, and you will support an interesting project on its own: http://www.wired.com/2014/11/indie-hosters/ http://www.wired.com/2014/11/indie-hosters/

Raed667 10y ago

I use OVH SSD VPS (the cheapest offer) and it has been working nicely for me. However if you select your server to be in a region requests from other regions might be a bit slow.

gravypod 10y ago

If you don't mind a sketchy company Volume Drive has great prices, just horrible service.

joshmn 10y ago
> sketchy company Understatement of the year. For those who are out of the loop, webhostingtalk.com has some great reads. Get some popcorn.
- gravypod 10y ago
  Didn't they just leave 300+ servers at a datacenter?
qmr 10y ago
Hah, they're still in business? Mine was one of the "stolen" servers from their old colocation provider or whatever whenever drama with them went down ~3 years ago.

nwilkens 10y ago

At https://MNX.io https://MNX.io we introduced an SSD cached storage VPS server -- 500GB starting at $7/month, available up to 40TB at $15/TB.

joshmn 10y ago
I remember when you guys were first starting out :) I think we emailed back and forth. Nice to see you guys are here!

hatmer 10y ago

Github let's you host static pages for free. Mega gives you 50GB free storage. Amazon EC2 has a nano option that costs very little.

fapjacks 10y ago

I use and recommend both OVH and Hetzner.

cweagans 10y ago

FYI, DigitalOcean is rolling out expandable block storage summer 2016 (so any day now), so that might be a good way to go. Not a lot of information, but keep an eye on https://www.digitalocean.com/features/storage/ https://www.digitalocean.com/features/storage/. You may be able to ask support to manually add you to the beta if you need it right now. DigitalOcean is really good about going out of their way to win your business. Full disclosure: I have no relationship to DO other than being a happy customer. If you're looking at mostly static assets though, why not just upload them to S3 and serve them directly from there (or via a Cloudfront distribution)? EC2 boxes are fairly inexpensive as well, and there's all kind of automation tools for provisioning your AWS resources + configuring them.

chrisgoman 10y ago
+1 on DigitalOcean with Block Storage. Currently using DO with Amazon S3 mounted using /etc/fstab via S3FS https://github.com/s3fs-fuse/s3fs-fuse https://github.com/s3fs-fuse/s3fs-fuse (which has eventual consistency but if you want cheap)

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

bcheung 10y ago

I use OVH. Kimsufi is basically the same company. I think it is their low end alias or white label. I think Kimsufi limits you to 100Mbps which might not be enough bandwidth speed if you plan on server video or other large files to a bunch of people at once. OVH gives you a 1 Gbps unlimited pipe included. https://www.ovh.com/us/dedicated-servers/storage/ https://www.ovh.com/us/dedicated-servers/storage/

quicksilver03 10y ago

Kimsufi's problem is the lack of redundancy, if the single drive on a box dies then you're not going to see your data again. However, given the low price you could rent them in pairs and replicate the data using something like DRBD. Depending on your comfort level, this can be a very viable and cost effective option, or a system administration nightmare. If it's the latter, then definitely look into an object storage solution if your applications are compatible with that. By the way, I've written an ebook which tries to help people make sense of the various hosting options available on the market today, perhaps it can be useful to you. The book site is https://www.hostingforappdevelopers.com https://www.hostingforappdevelopers.com

webtechgal 10y ago
Mine are mainly experimental apps, so the data redundancy is not really that important, but yes, at some point in time, if the need arises, I can get another box like you said, and may be just rsync everything via a daily cron job or something I suppose.
Gustomaximus 10y ago
>given the low price you could rent them in pairs and replicate the data using something like DRBD I'd be worried with this drive 2 is sitting 30cm from drive 1 so if something physical happened at the site itself your data is gone vs multi site coverage.

shaunpud 10y ago

Have you checked out ServerHub? They are very generous with storage; http://serverhub.com/vps/ssd-cached http://serverhub.com/vps/ssd-cached

jbardnz 10y ago

Seen as you already mention Vultr as an option they actually have dedicated block storage plans: https://www.vultr.com/pricing/blockstorage/ https://www.vultr.com/pricing/blockstorage/ A 500GB SSD is $50/month which seems fairly reasonable. You can use it directly with a cheap VPS from them as well.

webtechgal 10y ago
That's useful to know, but as mentioned in my original post, what I basically require is a dedi box and since Kimsufi is offering one with 500GB for under $10/mo., the Vultr offer won't make much commercial sense to me. Thanks anyway.

nreece 10y ago

Check out Dediserve - https://dediserve.com https://dediserve.com. They let you customise the resources (including SSD and NAS storage) as per your needs. Moreover, their performance and support are great too.

ahazred8ta 10y ago

"would require sizable amounts of storage space (but not much of other resources)" Self-hosting would be your best option if your bandwidth needs are modest. Your data is 'small' enough to fit on a local drive.

leandot 10y ago

I use kimsufi to host a side project and so far they have been really good. Switched away from Hetzner. Running multiple dockerized applications on a dedicated host is a good way to save on running costs until things pick up speed.

gargravarr 10y ago

Kimsufi are a great low-cost provider, I ran an Atom dedi with a 1TB disk with them for 2 years at around £12 a month. Never had any problems - great bandwidth to move data around, mostly used the big disk for offsite backups. However, an important consideration - they don't adjust their pricing for existing customers or allow the hardware to be upgraded. Around the 2-year mark, they dropped the price for the same server to just £3 a month and doubled the RAM. I was told if I wanted it, I'd have to give up my current server and move everything to a brand-new one. They wouldn't drop the price, and when I asked about doubling the RAM, was told it wasn't an option. They then put the price of my dedi up not a month later. I cancelled the server and have run my own hardware since then. Good for a specific use, but as the low price implies, there is no option to scale in future.

webtechgal 10y ago
Thanks for all this info. Just out of curiosity, when they offered the same config as your £12/mo box for £3/mo and refused to reduce your billing, could you not have simply bought the cheaper one, taken a snapshot of the existing server, transferred it over to the new one and discontinued the older one?
- gargravarr 10y ago
  I couldn't have done so using the KS dashboard, for example. As it was Linux, I could have cloned the machine fairly easily, but it seemed silly to me to go to all that trouble, essentially throwing away the original server and starting again. At the time, my need for a hosted machine was decreasing so I didn't want to expend much effort anyway.

BrianT 10y ago

Delimiter's full-ha cloud gives you 250GB space, 1 CPU, 1GB RAM for $6/month. You could add more CPU/more RAM for just a few pennies. Disk space scales to 50TB per disk quite cheaply. https://cc.delimiter.com/cart/cloud-resource-pool/ https://cc.delimiter.com/cart/cloud-resource-pool/ Another option is ObjSpace (S3 compatible storage) but that would require you to run S3FS or similar. http://delimiter.com/objspace-object-storage/ http://delimiter.com/objspace-object-storage/ [disclaimer I work for Delimiter]

haseeb1431 10y ago

Is there any way to get the crux of this whole discussion instead of going through each comment?