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S3 or glacier? Glacier is cost competitive with local disk but not very practical for the sorts of things people usually need lots of local disk for (media & di

S3 or glacier? Glacier is cost competitive with local disk but not very practical for the sorts of things people usually need lots of local disk for (media & disk images). Interested in how you use this! 20TB which u can keep in a 2-bay cute little nas will cost you $4k USD / year on S3 infrequent access tier in APAC (where I am). So "payback time" of local hardware is just 6 months vs S3 IA. That's before you pay for any data transfers.

fodkodrasz 2y ago
Did you factor in the resilience and redundancy S3 gives you and you cannot opt out from? I have my NAS, and it is cheaper than S3 if I ignore these, but having to run 2 offsite backups would make it much less compelling.
- xyzzy123 2y ago
  Agree, they are not the same thing. Yes, S3 provides much better durability. I just can't afford it. For my use-case I'm OK with un-hedged risk and dollars staying in my pocket.
  - ornornor 2y ago
    I backup my nas to rsync.net, it’s very cost effective using borg backup.
    - remram 2y ago
      $0.01/GB/mo, that does not seem better than Glacier, is it?
      - ornornor 2y ago
        Except it’s not glacier speeds, there are no bandwidth costs, support is on a completely different level than aws (you can actually reach an actual knowledgeable human), and you can use anything that speaks ssh. They also have an expert price at 0.008$/gb/mo here https://www.rsync.net/products/borg.html https://www.rsync.net/products/borg.html
- cm2187 2y ago
  Yes and no. I have been using NAS for a long time, and I use older drives as offline/offsite backups. So the cost is mostly amortized already. Those machines are off except once a week (local)/ once a month (offsite), to do an incremental backup. So this is a good use of some older drives.
- Dylan16807 2y ago
  They probably factored RAID1 into that price, which you can skip if you're setting up three copies. (At least I hope they did, their hardware prices must be dire if $2000 only gets you a tiny NAS and two 10TB drives.) If I do napkin math based on US prices, a mini PC and a 20TB external drive are a bit under $500 total, and a 2 bay NAS and a 20TB internal drive are a bit over $500 total, so that's about $1500 for the triple-NAS option and $3000/year for the S3 infrequent access option. Still extremely compelling.
bob1029 2y ago
> S3 or glacier This is the same product. > 20TB I think we might be pushing the 1% case here. Just because we can shove 20TB of data into a cute little nas does not mean we should. For me, knowledge that the data will definitely be there is way more important than having "free" access to a large pool of bytes.
- Espressosaurus 2y ago
  20 TB isn't that out of reach when you're running your media server and taking high resolution photos or video (modern cameras push a LOT of bits). I'm the last person I know who buys DVDs, and they're 2/3s of the reason I need more space. The last third is photography. 45.7 megapixels x 20 FPS adds up quick. S3's cost is extreme when you're talking in the tens of terabytes range. I don't have the upstream to seed the backup, and if I'm going outside of my internal network it's too slow to use as primary storage. Just the NAS on gigabit ethernet is barely adequate to the task.
- lurking_swe 2y ago
  hardly 1%, i’m sure anyone that works in the film industry or media in general has terabytes of video footage. Maybe even professional photographers who have many clients.
- SteveNuts 2y ago
  > knowledge that the data will definitely be there is way more important than having "free" access to a large pool of bytes Until Amazon inexplicably deletes your AWS account because your Amazon.com account had an expired credit card and was trying and failing to renew a subscription. Ask me how I know
- Hamuko 2y ago
  >This is the same product. Confusingly "Glacier" is both its own product, which stores data in "vaults", and a family of storage tiers on Amazon S3, which stores data in "buckets". I think Glacier the product is deprecated though, since accessing the Glacier dashboard immediately recommends using Glacier the S3 storage tiers instead.
- 2y ago

fodkodrasz 2y ago

Did you factor in the resilience and redundancy S3 gives you and you cannot opt out from? I have my NAS, and it is cheaper than S3 if I ignore these, but having to run 2 offsite backups would make it much less compelling.

xyzzy123 2y ago
Agree, they are not the same thing. Yes, S3 provides much better durability. I just can't afford it. For my use-case I'm OK with un-hedged risk and dollars staying in my pocket.
- ornornor 2y ago
  I backup my nas to rsync.net, it’s very cost effective using borg backup.
  - remram 2y ago
    $0.01/GB/mo, that does not seem better than Glacier, is it?
    - ornornor 2y ago
      Except it’s not glacier speeds, there are no bandwidth costs, support is on a completely different level than aws (you can actually reach an actual knowledgeable human), and you can use anything that speaks ssh. They also have an expert price at 0.008$/gb/mo here https://www.rsync.net/products/borg.html https://www.rsync.net/products/borg.html
cm2187 2y ago
Yes and no. I have been using NAS for a long time, and I use older drives as offline/offsite backups. So the cost is mostly amortized already. Those machines are off except once a week (local)/ once a month (offsite), to do an incremental backup. So this is a good use of some older drives.
Dylan16807 2y ago
They probably factored RAID1 into that price, which you can skip if you're setting up three copies. (At least I hope they did, their hardware prices must be dire if $2000 only gets you a tiny NAS and two 10TB drives.) If I do napkin math based on US prices, a mini PC and a 20TB external drive are a bit under $500 total, and a 2 bay NAS and a 20TB internal drive are a bit over $500 total, so that's about $1500 for the triple-NAS option and $3000/year for the S3 infrequent access option. Still extremely compelling.

bob1029 2y ago

> S3 or glacier This is the same product. > 20TB I think we might be pushing the 1% case here. Just because we can shove 20TB of data into a cute little nas does not mean we should. For me, knowledge that the data will definitely be there is way more important than having "free" access to a large pool of bytes.

Espressosaurus 2y ago
20 TB isn't that out of reach when you're running your media server and taking high resolution photos or video (modern cameras push a LOT of bits). I'm the last person I know who buys DVDs, and they're 2/3s of the reason I need more space. The last third is photography. 45.7 megapixels x 20 FPS adds up quick. S3's cost is extreme when you're talking in the tens of terabytes range. I don't have the upstream to seed the backup, and if I'm going outside of my internal network it's too slow to use as primary storage. Just the NAS on gigabit ethernet is barely adequate to the task.
lurking_swe 2y ago
hardly 1%, i’m sure anyone that works in the film industry or media in general has terabytes of video footage. Maybe even professional photographers who have many clients.
SteveNuts 2y ago
> knowledge that the data will definitely be there is way more important than having "free" access to a large pool of bytes Until Amazon inexplicably deletes your AWS account because your Amazon.com account had an expired credit card and was trying and failing to renew a subscription. Ask me how I know
Hamuko 2y ago
>This is the same product. Confusingly "Glacier" is both its own product, which stores data in "vaults", and a family of storage tiers on Amazon S3, which stores data in "buckets". I think Glacier the product is deprecated though, since accessing the Glacier dashboard immediately recommends using Glacier the S3 storage tiers instead.
2y ago