I'd like to find the cheapest way to store about 10 to 20 TBytes of data. After looking at some tape drives it seems like it'd be cheaper to get two or three big towers and fill them with large SATA drives attached to 3-ware controller cards.
I'm completely torn on going the absolute budget route vs spending more for something that'll allow easy upgradeability in the future. I basically need lots of space but file sending-- media like mp3s, video, etc.
it'll be raid 5 and I'll need at least 2-3TB initially but the ability to expand would be nice.
option 1: nice chassis with plenty of hotswap bays with sas expanders expensive sas raid card
option 2: cheap chassis to serve "immediate" needs and go with more later. not sure what I'd use as a card? maybe even onboard?
regarding reliability: I once saw a database of failure rates of different models. raptor was the most reliable of the "desktop" drives. anyone have the link? I'm wondering of the seagate ES drives are worth the extra money vs the non-ES drives. they're supposedely more reliable and the "server versions" of sata drives.
Person with the best info and most helpful for me (in my opinion) gets $10US via paypal
So I'm making one of those myspace resources websites in the hopes to get the odd weekly amount from advertising (yahoo/google ads) etc. Now before you jump on the "Oh boy, not another myspace website!", this site is totally different, but the same kinda thing applies.
Now, of course If I want to earn a decent amount on say 10000+ uniques a day I'm going to need a bit of bandwidth. The site itself isn't bandwidth heavy but I'd like to plan for the future.
Anyway, so I was looking at Godaddy and well
Economy Plan: • 5 GB Space • 250 GB Transfer • 500 Email Accounts • FREE! Software • 10 MySQL Databases • 50 Email Forwards • Forums, Blogging, Photo Galleries • No ads
Now, I only need 1gb space tops, but 250GB BANDWIDTH? Holy crap, I haven't seen that for that price ever?
3.95 a month? That's insane.
Is it really too good to be true? What should I be looking at? I just need it on one domain and that's fine because I'd want its own hosting package for each domain as I slowly develop more websites.
Can anyone please shed light for me and give me some general info on the path I should take.
Note: I don't want hosting packages where, if you do go over the monthly bandwidth (God Forbid at 250gb!!) I don't want to be charged an exorbinent amount. Just the "Bandwidh Exceeded" message would suffice.
Anyway, I look foward to some great responses.
Person with the best info and most helpful for me (in my opinion) gets $10US via paypal
which providers out there have the cheapest servers? I need a few "play" boxes for development, so no need to pay a lot. I was looking at vrtservers, but was wondering if there are any more out there in that price range? I don't need 24/7 support, at the most, a reload within a week at least when needed.
I am currently with SoftLayer and the minimum fee I paid is around 180$ per month.. I was wondering for the same plan like in SL, is there any other companies provide better price?
I just want to make a little information site with about 5 pages, nothing fancy, there will just be a very small amount of traffic. What is the cheapest reliable web hosting company or package out there? I am in the U.S. if that matters.
Most people would say all of above right? Well, if you had to stack each of the above in order of importance, where would you put cost at? Is it at the top for you or at the bottom? If I had to rate each of them it would look something like this:
Uptime Network Speed and reliability Redundancy of power, bandwidth, cooling Reputable Tier 1 carriers of bandwidth Quality Support Fast Support Quality hardware Cost
The problem is that I see many people on WHT acting like Cost if the #1 factor in determining a host. And when you let cost be your #1 determining factor, you will be usually sacrificing on some or all of the other factors that you should be looking at. The higher up the list you put cost in deciding where to host, the more you will sacrifice quality in these other important areas.
"But", you say, "I see many quality companies offering cheap pricing. Shouldn't I choose to go with them?" Consider this, hosting companies like any other business need to be able to make a profit. Sale prices are great but there are reasons for sale prices and you need to consider these reasons when choosing to buy a cheap server. Some common reasons for selling servers for extremely cheap are;
- The hardware is used and old and the hosting company is just looking get something for it. ANYTHING! - They have an excess of inventory for one reason or another that they need to get rid of. - They buy their servers used on Ebay and can therefore afford to sell them cheap. - The cheap server is merely a loss leader used to bring business in order to sell other products and services at full price but is not a regular price that you can expect from this company. - The company is new and is looking to attract prospective clients on price alone and is dropping the price just to get their client base increased quickly.
There are companies selling servers on WHT who fall into each of these categories so you need to think about this when you make a decision for who to go with. The common denominator with the above list is simple... It is Unsustainable! Not one of the reasons listed above can be sustained for a long period of time.
If you can get a good deal on a server with a solid company, and there are many on WHT that are great companies who have great deals on servers at times, then that is wonderful. But do not expect that you will be able to get insanely cheap pricing on a regular basis from this company and don't be surprised when you want another server if the price is significantly higher. Every hosting company has certain costs that are unavoidable:
- Rent - Power - Bandwidth - Payroll - Employee Benefits - Server Hardware Costs - Software Licensing - Marketing and Advertising - Maintenance Contracts - Network Equipment - Infrastructure Replacement (a/c's, generators, UPS units, etc.) - Other Utilities
The point in bringing all of this up is that if you plan on finding a hosting company that you can stay with for the long haul, you need to look at their regular pricing for retail servers and for reselling servers. Cheap prices are great, but no business can stay in business if they only offer cheap pricing. And if a hosting company is only attracting you by their cheap pricing, then it shows that they are most likely weak when it comes to the other essential factors mentioned above that need to be considered. Any hosting company selling servers for under $80 per month for instance is loosing money in some way. Eventually, the price will be raised to cover those costs (like at LT this year) and then you are left to make up that difference.
As with most things in life, good quality cannot be sold cheap, and that which is cheap is usually not good quality.
I've always been a seller that's primarily used PayPal only.. However, on my next online venture, we're stepping it up a grade and will be implementing a full CMS system, an e-commerce cart module (or platform in its entirety) and security through SSL certification.
I've taken a look at the SSL certificates offered by eNom and was wondering what you all thought would be the cheapest certificate that is suitable and ready for e-commerce that will process credit cards, etc.
Certainly the more expensive, I can assume is more feature and security laden, but just wanted to know what you all feel is a good balance of price, security and readiness for e-commerce.