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Linode is my top choice for hosting, but lately I've been tinkering on a project that needs a lot of disk, and it's hard to find good options there. On AWS ever

Linode is my top choice for hosting, but lately I've been tinkering on a project that needs a lot of disk, and it's hard to find good options there. On AWS every dimension scales independently, but with Linode I can't buy disk without buying CPU and RAM too. When I had a similar need a few years ago, I wound up renting a dedicated server, where even the cheapest came with 2TB or so. I'd love to just stick with Linode, but I need an option to add disk!

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
nik736 10y ago
"In the coming months we’ll be releasing into beta our new Linode Manager, RESTful API, and block storage service." From the blog post you just commented on ;-)
- pjungwir 10y ago
  Good catch. Thanks!
wx196 10y ago
I was in the same situation a year ago. Eventually found Vultr that allows attaching additional "disk instances". But despite that I would choose Linode for any resource-balanced project.
chrisan 10y ago
DigitalOcean has their new block storage https://www.digitalocean.com/products/storage/ https://www.digitalocean.com/products/storage/
- skrebbel 10y ago
  Cool. Is "block storage" anything other than a fancy new word for "network drive"?
Veratyr 10y ago
If you want disk, as in spinning rust, I think it's going to remain that way for a long time. For some reason cloud providers don't like to offer disk at a reasonable price. I suspect it might be because it's not actually a single disk but space on something like a RAID10 SAN, where costs are higher since it inherently requires more hardware. Personally, I settled with colocation. I pay $60/mo + $2k one-off for the initial hardware + say $150/5y/4TB HDD, which, for 80TB of storage over 5y comes out to a total of ~$88/mo, or $0.001/GBmo. Even if I was to store 3 copies of everything instead of doing erasure coding, my costs are roughly half of what Backblaze B2 charges. And my disks are fully online block storage, not necessarily object storage.
- anatoly 10y ago
  Speaking as someone who hasn't tried colocation, would you care to recommend your provider or explain who the Linode and the DO are in that space?
  - Veratyr 10y ago
    I'm sharing a cabinet with a few other people in one of Hurricane Electric's datacenters. A full cabinet is $400/mo and we split it 7 ways based on space and power consumption. If you can't get together the people for a full cabinet (which I think is definitely worth it, the more you buy at once, the cheaper it gets), there are a number of providers that offer single server colocation. The only one I've really heard much about though is Joe's Datacenter, which is in Kansas City, Missouri. Unfortunately there isn't really a "Linode" or "DO" in the colocation space anymore. There used to be https://prgmr.com https://prgmr.com, which offered transparent pricing based on power and bandwidth usage but they've stopped that I believe. The few global providers are generally geared towards multinational corporations or at least businesses more than small groups or hobbyists. You're really best off with the smaller regional providers near wherever you are.
  - astrodust 10y ago
    There is no de-facto colocation provider. Peer1 is an example of one that has a lot of locations, but it's not by any means dominant. Every major urban hub has a multitude of providers. Some offer expensive, but reliable service, others cheap but you get what you pay for, and there's a mix in between. Talk to people and ask for tours. Every town is completely different in terms of scene.
mtgx 10y ago
IwStack (by Prometeus) can be customized quite a bit storage-wise: http://iwstack.com/price-calculator.php http://iwstack.com/price-calculator.php
deftnerd 10y ago
Delimiter has a clever solution for $10 a month. They call it Slot Hosting. You ship them a disk and they'll host it and attach it as additional storage on a VPS. https://www.delimiter.com/slot-hosting/ https://www.delimiter.com/slot-hosting/ I use it to host an 8tb drive that I then attach to a dedicated server I rent for $20 a month. $30 a month and I have a server that I use for Plex (16 cores, 3.2ghz, 32 gigs of memory, and 10tb of total storage).
- jamroom 10y ago
  Thanks for sharing - this is really cool.
- Lownin 10y ago
  Which hosting plan are you using for Plex?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- BrianT 10y ago
  [Disclosure - I work at Delimiter] Thanks for the recommendation, slot hosting is a good solution if you need to get a disk online with a VPS attached to it. We've had a lot of people asking how you did this so just to explain: Slot hosting $120/year ($10/month) - that gives you one 3.5" or 2.5" slot to send your disk in. You can aggregate up multiple slots and aggregate the VPS resources into one large VM. This is great for things like ZFS and software RAID. The VM is KVM based. https://www.delimiter.com/slot-hosting/ https://www.delimiter.com/slot-hosting/ The server is this: Dual E5420, 16GB RAM, 1TB or 2x500GB HDD $200/year ($16.66/month). https://cc.delimiter.com/?cmd=cart&action=add&id=1718 https://cc.delimiter.com/?cmd=cart&action=add&id=1718 Slot hosting uses dedicated (non-contended) CPU/RAM/Disk resources so you can run Plex directly on it if you have enough slots aggregated to give you the RAM.
  - thatusernametho 10y ago
    Why annual pricing? I'd do it if you had monthly pricing.....Since the payment is annual what happens if 2 or 3 months in I decide to change and need something else?
mjrpes 10y ago
I am in the same boat. Need additional storage for less random-access demanding data, like photos/videos. If you check the Linode forums, they have begun to work on block storage option, like Vulr/DO. But it is still early in the design phase and they don't have an estimate launch date yet.
boulos 10y ago
Slightly off-topic, but EC2 doesn't really scale independently if you compare it to GCE. We let you combine 24 vcpus with 39 GB of RAM, 3 partitions of Local SSD and a few GPUs, all independently (though the ratio of RAM to vcpu is currently bounded between .9 and 6.5). One of our easiest pricing wins is against say the i2.* series ("Were you trying to buy more flash or more cores?") and now against their p2.* GPU series. It's pretty liberating to actually mix and match. Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

nik736 10y ago

"In the coming months we’ll be releasing into beta our new Linode Manager, RESTful API, and block storage service." From the blog post you just commented on ;-)

pjungwir 10y ago
Good catch. Thanks!

wx196 10y ago

I was in the same situation a year ago. Eventually found Vultr that allows attaching additional "disk instances". But despite that I would choose Linode for any resource-balanced project.

chrisan 10y ago

DigitalOcean has their new block storage https://www.digitalocean.com/products/storage/ https://www.digitalocean.com/products/storage/

skrebbel 10y ago
Cool. Is "block storage" anything other than a fancy new word for "network drive"?

Veratyr 10y ago

If you want disk, as in spinning rust, I think it's going to remain that way for a long time. For some reason cloud providers don't like to offer disk at a reasonable price. I suspect it might be because it's not actually a single disk but space on something like a RAID10 SAN, where costs are higher since it inherently requires more hardware. Personally, I settled with colocation. I pay $60/mo + $2k one-off for the initial hardware + say $150/5y/4TB HDD, which, for 80TB of storage over 5y comes out to a total of ~$88/mo, or $0.001/GBmo. Even if I was to store 3 copies of everything instead of doing erasure coding, my costs are roughly half of what Backblaze B2 charges. And my disks are fully online block storage, not necessarily object storage.

anatoly 10y ago
Speaking as someone who hasn't tried colocation, would you care to recommend your provider or explain who the Linode and the DO are in that space?
- Veratyr 10y ago
  I'm sharing a cabinet with a few other people in one of Hurricane Electric's datacenters. A full cabinet is $400/mo and we split it 7 ways based on space and power consumption. If you can't get together the people for a full cabinet (which I think is definitely worth it, the more you buy at once, the cheaper it gets), there are a number of providers that offer single server colocation. The only one I've really heard much about though is Joe's Datacenter, which is in Kansas City, Missouri. Unfortunately there isn't really a "Linode" or "DO" in the colocation space anymore. There used to be https://prgmr.com https://prgmr.com, which offered transparent pricing based on power and bandwidth usage but they've stopped that I believe. The few global providers are generally geared towards multinational corporations or at least businesses more than small groups or hobbyists. You're really best off with the smaller regional providers near wherever you are.
- astrodust 10y ago
  There is no de-facto colocation provider. Peer1 is an example of one that has a lot of locations, but it's not by any means dominant. Every major urban hub has a multitude of providers. Some offer expensive, but reliable service, others cheap but you get what you pay for, and there's a mix in between. Talk to people and ask for tours. Every town is completely different in terms of scene.

mtgx 10y ago

IwStack (by Prometeus) can be customized quite a bit storage-wise: http://iwstack.com/price-calculator.php http://iwstack.com/price-calculator.php

deftnerd 10y ago

Delimiter has a clever solution for $10 a month. They call it Slot Hosting. You ship them a disk and they'll host it and attach it as additional storage on a VPS. https://www.delimiter.com/slot-hosting/ https://www.delimiter.com/slot-hosting/ I use it to host an 8tb drive that I then attach to a dedicated server I rent for $20 a month. $30 a month and I have a server that I use for Plex (16 cores, 3.2ghz, 32 gigs of memory, and 10tb of total storage).

jamroom 10y ago
Thanks for sharing - this is really cool.
Lownin 10y ago
Which hosting plan are you using for Plex?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
BrianT 10y ago
[Disclosure - I work at Delimiter] Thanks for the recommendation, slot hosting is a good solution if you need to get a disk online with a VPS attached to it. We've had a lot of people asking how you did this so just to explain: Slot hosting $120/year ($10/month) - that gives you one 3.5" or 2.5" slot to send your disk in. You can aggregate up multiple slots and aggregate the VPS resources into one large VM. This is great for things like ZFS and software RAID. The VM is KVM based. https://www.delimiter.com/slot-hosting/ https://www.delimiter.com/slot-hosting/ The server is this: Dual E5420, 16GB RAM, 1TB or 2x500GB HDD $200/year ($16.66/month). https://cc.delimiter.com/?cmd=cart&action=add&id=1718 https://cc.delimiter.com/?cmd=cart&action=add&id=1718 Slot hosting uses dedicated (non-contended) CPU/RAM/Disk resources so you can run Plex directly on it if you have enough slots aggregated to give you the RAM.
- thatusernametho 10y ago
  Why annual pricing? I'd do it if you had monthly pricing.....Since the payment is annual what happens if 2 or 3 months in I decide to change and need something else?

mjrpes 10y ago

I am in the same boat. Need additional storage for less random-access demanding data, like photos/videos. If you check the Linode forums, they have begun to work on block storage option, like Vulr/DO. But it is still early in the design phase and they don't have an estimate launch date yet.

boulos 10y ago

Slightly off-topic, but EC2 doesn't really scale independently if you compare it to GCE. We let you combine 24 vcpus with 39 GB of RAM, 3 partitions of Local SSD and a few GPUs, all independently (though the ratio of RAM to vcpu is currently bounded between .9 and 6.5). One of our easiest pricing wins is against say the i2.* series ("Were you trying to buy more flash or more cores?") and now against their p2.* GPU series. It's pretty liberating to actually mix and match. Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud.