Cloud Storage for $2 per TB per month • Hacker News Board

Re: Cloud Storage for $2 per TB per month

#241

Post by ineedasername » Sat, Mar 07, 2020, 2:51 AM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #160

walrus01 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OVH, the massive hosting company, is located in a former aluminum smelter next to a hydroelectric dam in Quebec. They keep costs as low as absolutely possible, but their operating costs as a whole are still considerably higher than something designed with one nine of uptime. I get that you're mostly joking by saying "yeah sometimes everything shorts out", but we have electrical codes in the US/Canada for a reason.

In most places you don't need to build to code, as long as you take other steps to mitigate risk. Saying "this entire building is designed to catch fire, and if it does, it won't do harm to neighbouring buildings, people, or the environment" is probably a good start.

If you're in the developed world, that isn't going to fly. "other buildings won't burn down" isn't going to get you a pass on these things.

Re: Cloud Storage for $2 per TB per month

#242

Post by jauer » Sat, Mar 07, 2020, 2:59 AM UTC

notyourday wrote: post #107

walrus01 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abandoned pepboys stores don't usually have very good fiber connectivity. Backblaze and similar hosting/storage companies move enough traffic that they need to be topologically close to major IX points. If all you want is cheap commercial real estate with cheap dollars per square foot figures, there are plenty of economically depressed areas within the United States that you could put things. Those areas usually have…

> Abandoned pepboys stores don't usually have very good fiber connectivity. Backblaze and similar hosting/storage companies move enough traffic that they need to be topologically close to major IX points. Not stores. Data centers. It is typically cheaper to get long distance fiber links than metro fiber and midsize data centers do not consume that much power, power which is plentiful outside the major metros, especia…

> Not stores. Data centers.

Honestly, it doesn't make much difference. Datacenters built for random corporations often only have connectivity to the local ILEC or MSO which is going to get you pretty poor pricing.

Re: Cloud Storage for $2 per TB per month

#243

Post by _ea1k » Sat, Mar 07, 2020, 3:05 AM UTC

So, $48 USD/year for 2TB? That's a little less than idrive, as they charge ~70/year for 2TB.

Re: Cloud Storage for $2 per TB per month

#244

Post by aiisjustanif » Sat, Mar 07, 2020, 3:08 AM UTC

You lost me on the homepage (sia.tech) there are only 895 hosts storing a total of 206TB right now. That coupled with the shady infrastructure.

You aren’t touching my enterprise data, not even the cold storage logs.

Re: Cloud Storage for $2 per TB per month

#245

Post by badestrand » Sat, Mar 07, 2020, 3:15 AM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #100

throwaway9878 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody with more money than you can always undercut you in anything you ever do so why bother ever trying to do anything

My point is taking something, adding inefficiency, then pronouncing it's "cheapest in class" isn't logically possible.

You are confusing "cheapest option possible" with "cheapest option available". Maybe Amazon _could_ be cheapest and most efficient in everything but they aren't, that's why they make a lot of profit with their cloud services. Thus there can easily be a competitor with a cheaper offering, especially if they are cutting some corners as per the article, even if they have some inefficiencies in other areas.

Re: Cloud Storage for $2 per TB per month

#246

Post by pepemon » Sat, Mar 07, 2020, 3:16 AM UTC

throwaway3157 wrote: post #83

chx wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I didn't read all their math but I expect their final result to be off by a factor of 2-5x. Can't be more than 2.5 because Backblaze B2 already gives you $5/TB/Mo.

> Can't be more than 2.5 because Backblaze B2 already gives you $5/TB/Mo. Well it can be, if they have a lot of inefficiencies. Backblaze could have more experienced engineers who overcame these. I assure you, I can accidentally design a very expensive storage system as I’m not that smart ;)

Who are you?

Re: Cloud Storage for $2 per TB per month

#247

Post by caymanjim » Sat, Mar 07, 2020, 3:21 AM UTC

comex wrote: post #95

caymanjim wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dropbox is $10/TB/mo, which is the "old" industry standard (and still what most big guys charge). Backblaze is $5, but they charge egress fees, so usage matters. Dropbox doesn't charge for egress, but there are limits on "Public" folder bandwidth (and you can't pay for more if you max out). I don't think there are limits on private content, but I bet there's a soft throttle or some limit that will get you contacted.…

Surely you mean Mbit, unless you’re streaming uncompressed video for some reason! :)

Indeed. HD streaming seems to need about 5.4Mbps reliably. Spaces is working well enough, but sometimes I have to pause for ten minutes to buffer enough for the rest of the film. It usually works, but with variable bitrate it must spike at times.

Re: Cloud Storage for $2 per TB per month

#248

Post by H8crilA » Sat, Mar 07, 2020, 3:24 AM UTC

Legogris wrote: post #136

Taek wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure! First up, we don't do repairs every time one host goes down. Standard practice on the network is to wait to do a repair until a full 25% of the redundancy is missing (in 64-of-96, that would be 8 hosts offline). Then you repair all 8 at once, significantly reducing the total amount of repair traffic. But secondly, offline doesn't usually mean dead and gone, with unstable datacenters like this they are usually b…

That sounds incredibly energy-inefficient. On average you have 12.5% of servers running but not contributing and possibly incurring load on other nodes.

12.5% overhead isn't that much. It's what just the networking gear can easily eat in a data center (12% out of all the non-cooling-related power supply).

Reed-Solomon encoding adds 50%, of you want 3 block per 2 data blocks. Replicated encoding (not relevant here since this is allow throughput usecase, but necessary if you want to sustain high read throughput) is adding at least 200% (if you want a 3x replication, which I think should be the minimum).

Re: Cloud Storage for $2 per TB per month

#249

Post by caymanjim » Sat, Mar 07, 2020, 3:25 AM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #163

harias wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you try GSuite Business account with 5 accounts? Google offers unlimited cloud storage if you get more than 5 accounts (5*12 = 60 USD/month and no egress)

It's 'unlimited' until you use it too much, and then all your google accounts will get perma-banned...

I've read this as well, so I didn't try. I also don't want to spend that much. I have 120 movies in Spaces and it only costs me about $8/mo. My egress is under the free tier so far, and overages amount to about four cents per movie stream.

Re: Cloud Storage for $2 per TB per month

#250

Post by ericflo » Sat, Mar 07, 2020, 3:27 AM UTC

ac29 wrote: post #240

ericflo wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but it cannot be true, right? It's just what they promise in the hypothetical future, not current price-tag? Here's the live pricing, right now: https://siastats.info/storage_pricing > Is it cheaper to implement it on blockchain than by conventional means? It's more so that anyone can join the network as a host. They don't have to have a financial or business relationship with anyone, they can just provide their st…

> It's more so that anyone can join the network as a host. They don't have to have a financial or business relationship with anyone, they can just provide their storage service and charge for it. No way to do that currently in the world without a blockchain. Maybe I misunderstand your point, but I could certainly install MinIO (a S3 compatible object store) on a home NAS and charge people for it without using a block…

> I could certainly install MinIO (a S3 compatible object store) on a home NAS and charge people for it

But how would that work? You'd probably make a website or app that had users sign up for an account, and then with that account they could associate payment information from a payment processing company, and then you'd provide them with credentials where they could log in to their Minio instance. Right?

Then, you have to go out and market your service, explain to people why they should use it instead of existing alternatives, convince people that you're trustworthy, build a reputation, and generally do sales.

In the case of Sia, you build your host, plug it in, announce it to the Sia blockchain, and then clients from all around the world start paying to use your storage.

Clients don't have to register for an account first, don't have to involve a third-party payment processing company, and don't need a sales pitch because they algorithmically test, measure, and rank hosts.

I remember at the outset of the web, a new thing was this user demand for services to become "self-serve", as in, you would no longer need to talk to a salesperson and establish a relationship in order to buy something — even something custom. I see this as the next step of that, where you want to be able to programmatically and algorithmically establish and dissolve those kinds of service agreements.