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Ask HN: Cheap Bulk Storage?

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Re: Ask HN: Cheap Bulk Storage?

#12
post #2

Supermicro has a 45-bay JBOD that should be under 10 cents/GB populated: http://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/4U/?chs=847 HP has a 70-bay JBOD that works out to under 30 cents/GB: http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF25a/12169-304616-3...

It's also worth looking at their 72 disk, 2.5" version

http://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/4U/417/SC417E16-R...

Using that, and 72 1TB 2.5" drives, (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136...)

(($109 * 72) / (72 * 1TB * .75) in dollars per gigabyte) = $.15/Gb

Re: Ask HN: Cheap Bulk Storage?

#13

Diomede might be worth a look. Their offline and nearline options are waaay less expensive than S3. Never used them though so let us know how it works out if you go with them. http://www.diomedestorage.com/

Their page appears to have a single unlinked image on it, and nothing else..?

Re: Ask HN: Cheap Bulk Storage?

#14
post #12
post #2

Supermicro has a 45-bay JBOD that should be under 10 cents/GB populated: http://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/4U/?chs=847 HP has a 70-bay JBOD that works out to under 30 cents/GB: http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF25a/12169-304616-3...

It's also worth looking at their 72 disk, 2.5" version http://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/4U/417/SC417E16-R... Using that, and 72 1TB 2.5" drives, ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136... ) (($109 * 72) / (72 * 1TB * .75) in dollars per gigabyte) = $.15/Gb

Yeah, basically 2.5" gives you the same space but twice the spindles for twice the price. Probably not worth it for archival storage.

Re: Ask HN: Cheap Bulk Storage?

#15
post #14
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also worth looking at their 72 disk, 2.5" version http://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/4U/417/SC417E16-R... Using that, and 72 1TB 2.5" drives, ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136... ) (($109 * 72) / (72 * 1TB * .75) in dollars per gigabyte) = $.15/Gb

Yeah, basically 2.5" gives you the same space but twice the spindles for twice the price. Probably not worth it for archival storage.

Agreed. It'd be faster, but that's not really what we're looking for- We want to get the cost per GB to be as low as humanly possible, while maintaining at least an illusion of reliability.

Re: Ask HN: Cheap Bulk Storage?

#16

I'm surprised there aren't any services selling raw storage space. i.e. no RAID or other redundancy, no doubling as a static web-server, just a bunch of disks. So people (myself included) buy physical HDDs for local backup -- simply because every online alternative jacks up the price by maintaining 3+ copies and keeping everything permanently online.

People would lose data and then blame the provider, creating nothing but bad PR.

Re: Ask HN: Cheap Bulk Storage?

#17

I'm surprised there aren't any services selling raw storage space. i.e. no RAID or other redundancy, no doubling as a static web-server, just a bunch of disks. So people (myself included) buy physical HDDs for local backup -- simply because every online alternative jacks up the price by maintaining 3+ copies and keeping everything permanently online.

The closest equiv. would be Amazon's EBS, but they're pricing on this is through the roof. Storing 70TB would be 8K/month, without ANY bandwidth fees..

Re: Ask HN: Cheap Bulk Storage?

#18

I'm surprised there aren't any services selling raw storage space. i.e. no RAID or other redundancy, no doubling as a static web-server, just a bunch of disks. So people (myself included) buy physical HDDs for local backup -- simply because every online alternative jacks up the price by maintaining 3+ copies and keeping everything permanently online.

That's a curious idea. How would you access the raw storage? iSCSI? And then you run your own RAID on top? What's the advantage to you? It's ever so slightly cheaper?

Backblaze (no affiliation) is $5/month or $50/yr. That's pretty hard to beat.

Also, running a static web-server is fairly trivial to setup these days, what would a service not running a static web-server do/have?

Every online alternative has a vested interest in both A. saving money, and B. not losing your data. As much as you trust a business to perform B adequately, you implicitly trust it to perform A at least as well.

Re: Ask HN: Cheap Bulk Storage?

#19
post #12
post #2

Supermicro has a 45-bay JBOD that should be under 10 cents/GB populated: http://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/4U/?chs=847 HP has a 70-bay JBOD that works out to under 30 cents/GB: http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF25a/12169-304616-3...

It's also worth looking at their 72 disk, 2.5" version http://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/4U/417/SC417E16-R... Using that, and 72 1TB 2.5" drives, ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136... ) (($109 * 72) / (72 * 1TB * .75) in dollars per gigabyte) = $.15/Gb

It's worth noting at this time, that most SSDs only come in a 2.5" version. (Not for cheap bulk storage but because that's arguable Supermicro's intentions for this chassis.)
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