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Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network

blog.sia.tech

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Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network

#171

Post by AmericanChopper »

solidasparagus wrote: post #146
zherbert wrote: post #118

Hi all, author here, just wanted to say I am thrilled to see the HN community discuss decentralized cloud storage in more detail. There are many drawbacks today and narrow use-cases, but our goal is to continue to improve Sia – and over the coming years we will prove that decentralized storage can compete directly with Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. We feel confident that the marketplace dynamics, in particular, will…

Pretty arrogant to say you're going to make cloud storage providers obsolete when you haven't even built a competing solution. You can't even share data yet... And what about all the other features that cloud providers offer? You say "[the] Sia software is exponentially improving, and performance and featureset is quickly approaching Amazon S3", but I see absolutely no evidence of even the most basic features of clou…

I went and tested this after reading the article

https://filebase.com/

Only took me a couple of minutes to get a file uploaded using the aws-cli. It’s the only decentralized object storage solution I’ve ever seen that seems to actually work.

Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network

#172

Post by linker3000 »

leetbulb wrote: post #133
AdamJacobMuller wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On balance, I purchased 45 refurb 4TB SAS drives around the same time. I had two DOA with 0% failure rate since then. Also, very anecdotal, I know.

I'm wondering if the fact mine were He filled refurbs could've been a factor.

Beyond a functional test, checking the SMART data for an indication of overall drive state and He containment, and then giving the drive a quick clean, it would be interesting to know the supplier's scope for 'refurbishing' an He drive.

Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network

#173

Post by ken666 »

zherbert wrote: post #118

Hi all, author here, just wanted to say I am thrilled to see the HN community discuss decentralized cloud storage in more detail. There are many drawbacks today and narrow use-cases, but our goal is to continue to improve Sia – and over the coming years we will prove that decentralized storage can compete directly with Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. We feel confident that the marketplace dynamics, in particular, will…

Hi,

Any chances that Sia will eventually support directly restic/Borg?

I did not know about filebase (and looks interesting), but honestly it is barely competitive with backblaze/wasabi for backups.

Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network

#174

Post by [deleted] »

jchw wrote: post #124
zherbert wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Appreciate your response. My comparison to the cost of a hard drive today is not meant to be a direct comparison, but instead to demonstrate that traditional cloud storage is actually quite expensive. Sia is able to bring down storage costs by an order of magnitude and bandwidth costs by two orders of magnitude. While most HN readers understand the nuances of cloud storage costs, most non-technical readers are unfami…

The issue I take is that the comparison is truly not meaningful. Yes, storage is cheap, but you are comparing the cost of a refurbished disk to a managed service. This may lead people to think cloud storage is a waste of money, which I personally think is untrue (though Sia certainly may be able to do it for cheaper than cloud storage, too. Both things can be true.) While the cost to us is certainly more than the cos…

[deleted]

Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network

#175

Post by nabla9 »

jchw wrote: post #136
gnode wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What a refurbished hard disk does not give you: [...] The whole point is that a decentralized storage network can add such features on top of the 1TB refurbished hard drive. The refurbished drive may not be reliable, but if you replicate your data amongst many separate drives with independent failure (geographically distributed; different providing entities) then you can create a system with greater reliability. By…

What I am not saying is that Sia is not viable or that cloud storage providers have no downsides, which they clearly do. I did not mean to imply that there is anything wrong with this service, just to express my annoyance with the comparison. I am not happy that my comment got so much attention, because I had no intention to overshadow the announcement with my single gripe. The line that is annoying me and probably o…

The comparison is meaningful setup for discussing decentralized cloud storage.

The comparison establishes the fact hat Amazon's price is not coming from the physical storage HW itself, its the everything around it. Then you can move to discussing how to get other parts cheaper.

Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network

#176

Post by Fornax96 »

camjohnson26 wrote: post #122
yasp wrote: post #2

How do services like Sia handle illegal content?

How does http handle illegal content? Is there any reason that content should be blocked at a protocol level instead of punishing the person who created it through existing regulations? If Sia has a way to remove such content it loses its decentralized nature, which is the whole reason it exists in the first place. Should it exist? Well sometimes important content is illegal, such as political content in China. It’s…

Perfectly said. Removing "illegal" content does not solve the fact that the content exists. The problem should be tackled at the source.

Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network

#177

Post by w56rjrtyu6ru »

weq wrote: post #164
jchw wrote: post #74

> Today it is possible to purchase a refurbished 1 TB hard drive for about $20 — so buyers are essentially paying Amazon each month the entire cost of the hard drives used to store their data! What a refurbished hard disk does not give you: - Redundant storage - Redundant power/network/etc. - Geographic distribution - A network API - Any networking, or uplinks at all - Access control - A team ensuring the reliability…

I think the use-case of cloud storage is mostly marketing by cloud provides to show relevance to the consumer. They are are loss leaders at best; used to lock you in to their services / track your every move; at worst. I think the comparison with a $20 1TB hdd is perfect. Cloud providers, and phone makers, have convinced you to have your photos, music, data, online, always. Like a bank. Among other things, its much e…

[dead]

Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network

#178

Post by gridlockd »

bin0 wrote: post #112
leetbulb wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off topic, but: I purchased three refurb 6TB HGST He HDDs in Jan. from a reputable shop. All three failed last month. I was so happy that the shop completely refunded all of them because the warranty is generally very limited on refurb HDDs. Normal RMA is 5yr on this specific model. There's no way refurb drives are cost effective for these environments.

Backblaze's failure/longevity stats are indispensable when considering which drive to purchase: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-stats-for-2018/

If you went by these stats, you'd buy HGST...

Not saying you shouldn't, I'd probably do so as well. Curiously, there's no 6GB HGSTs over at Backblaze.

Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network

#179

Post by gridlockd »

I have a feeling this is an apples to oranges comparison.

Can you serve clients directly over HTTP using Sia in a permissioned manner? If not, then it's not usable like S3. If it's not usable like S3, then S3 pricing comparison is meaningless.

Also, how correlated is Sia pricing to the overall cryptocurrency market? Will my costs go through the roof when there's another crypto bubble?

Would it actually scale? If Sia became popular, would prices go up like Bitcoin transaction prices? Isn't the extremely cheap bandwidth due to spare capacity of average broadband plans? If so, wouldn't providers eventually cut that off? Broadband pricing relies on the fact that most users don't use all of the bandwidth most of the time.

Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network

#180

Post by jtbayly »

weq wrote: post #164
jchw wrote: post #74

> Today it is possible to purchase a refurbished 1 TB hard drive for about $20 — so buyers are essentially paying Amazon each month the entire cost of the hard drives used to store their data! What a refurbished hard disk does not give you: - Redundant storage - Redundant power/network/etc. - Geographic distribution - A network API - Any networking, or uplinks at all - Access control - A team ensuring the reliability…

I think the use-case of cloud storage is mostly marketing by cloud provides to show relevance to the consumer. They are are loss leaders at best; used to lock you in to their services / track your every move; at worst. I think the comparison with a $20 1TB hdd is perfect. Cloud providers, and phone makers, have convinced you to have your photos, music, data, online, always. Like a bank. Among other things, its much e…

Wrong. The reason we do now is so that we can have our photo library accessible on our phones and synced between multiple devices.
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