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Introducing Google Cloud Storage Nearline

googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com

11–20 of 188 posts

Re: Introducing Google Cloud Storage Nearline

#11
post #7

So is this a blatant dig at Amazon's Glacier? "Fast performance... unlike competitors" As they generally do tit for tat on price wars, it will be interesting to see what Amazon responds with.

> So is this a blatant dig at Amazon's Glacier?

Glacier is the other big offering from a comparable cloud vendor in this space, so, yeah. The performance claim is directed largely at Glacier, as is the consistent access one.

Re: Introducing Google Cloud Storage Nearline

#13
post #9
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There it is. Still, someone like 'cperciva could pool a lot of their customers' data together and offer high speeds even for small amounts of data.

http://xkcd.com/1494/ The unusual thing about this market is that by constantly improving the price point of their product but keeping their profit margins the same, AWS has forced every competitor in it to actually compete at the limits of their capability - so any scheme like this that got any serious traction would presumably be self-undermining. The economists will have considered all of the unused provided capac…

I don't know why you think so. AWS is not very price competitive. I make good money consulting on setup of more cost-effective alternatives to things like S3.

The large cloud providers sell on brand recognition, convenience and trust, not cost. They may compete with each other on cost to try to cannibalise each others markets, but they're not even close to pushing the envelope on cost efficiency in terms of the prices they offer.

Re: Introducing Google Cloud Storage Nearline

#14
post #4

from the documentation: "You should expect 4 MB/s of throughput per TB of data stored as Nearline Storage. This throughput scales linearly with increased storage consumption."

That would mean that if you had about 1TB stored it would take more than 3 days to retrieve it (with an initial 3 second delay before it starts).

Re: Introducing Google Cloud Storage Nearline

#15
post #12
post #8

So how is this implemented? Spun-down disk drives?

My guess would be disk drives that are otherwise used for I/O intensive purposes, and where there's tons of unused/wasted space. 4MB/s is only around 4% of the bandwidth of a modern 1TB hard disk.

You can store 1 Pb and get 4000 MB/s

Re: Introducing Google Cloud Storage Nearline

#16
slightly off topic here, but when i tried to setup an account, which should get me $300 free, it auto selects my country (Ireland) and then tells me:

Tax status Business

This service can only be used for business or commercial reasons. You are responsible for assessing and reporting VAT.

and then makes me enter a VAT number... well, I will stick with AWS and Azure, since neither of those "REQUIRE" a vat number or business status.

PS: i know a business name costs about EUR20 to setup, but the VAT requirement is the pain in the left one...

Re: Introducing Google Cloud Storage Nearline

#19
post #17

Isn't the price a little high? $10/TB/mo is the same as Dropbox, and this has a lot fewer features than Dropbox.

It's a bit apples to oranges comparison. Dropbox is a consumer product, like Google Drive. Nearline is targeted to app developers and enterprises

Re: Introducing Google Cloud Storage Nearline

#20
post #13
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://xkcd.com/1494/ The unusual thing about this market is that by constantly improving the price point of their product but keeping their profit margins the same, AWS has forced every competitor in it to actually compete at the limits of their capability - so any scheme like this that got any serious traction would presumably be self-undermining. The economists will have considered all of the unused provided capac…

I don't know why you think so. AWS is not very price competitive. I make good money consulting on setup of more cost-effective alternatives to things like S3. The large cloud providers sell on brand recognition, convenience and trust, not cost. They may compete with each other on cost to try to cannibalise each others markets, but they're not even close to pushing the envelope on cost efficiency in terms of the price…

Interesting - I'm speaking from general market sentiment (e.g. http://www.techrepublic.com/article/aws-is-playing-chicken-w...) but I'd never heard the "Mountain of Margin" argument (http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikekavis/2014/08/08/how-niche-c...) before you called it in to question - thanks for bringing it up. I now don't know what to believe - time to go and do my homework on this one.
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