Hello all,<p>I have a few side projects (all web apps) that would require sizable amounts of storage space (but not much of other resources) once I bring them live, so I've been searching for cheap dedicated hosting options.<p>If huge space requirement was not a constraint, I'd say Digital Ocean (or other low-cost cloud services like Linode, Vultr etc.) would provide great bang for the buck, but I'm talking hundreds rather than tens of gigs of storage here at which levels, DO etc. would be way beyond my reach, and out of the question.<p>After some research, I have found what I believe to be the cheapest dedicated box provider and before signing up there, I thought I'd run it by HN, for other opinions, suggestions etc. What do you all think?<p>https://www.kimsufi.com/us/en/servers.xml
Here's an option you might not have considered, but might be applicable, depending on the read/write speeds you need from those hundreds of gigabytes of data. Amazon has cloud drive, which costs something like 50 bucks a year, and has unlimited storage.<p>The neat thing is someone created a FUSE file system called acd_cli that allows you to use the cloud drive as if it were a normal hard drive. The speeds aren't too shabby either; I easily get 150MB/s up and down on my dedicated server, and response times are snappy. Additionally, you can create a unionfs mount so that writes are instant, and you sync new files on a regular schedule.<p>Of course, that might not be applicable to your use case, but I use mine for many things. I have a plex server running using that with over 13TB of videos, and it works flawlessly. It allows me to run a full plex server with unlimited storage for 20 bucks a month.
- If latency isn't an issue you could store your things on Backblaze [1] which is by far the cheapest storage I've found.<p>- For my high-storage requirements I rent a dedicated Hetzner server with 2x3TB disks for around 30 euro/month [2]<p>[1] <a href="https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-storage.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-storage.html</a><p>[2] <a href="https://robot.your-server.de/order/market/country/DE" rel="nofollow">https://robot.your-server.de/order/market/country/DE</a>
Depends more on your usage requirements:<p>- If you're basically just doing a backup and not reading data very often, Backblaze B2 is a good choice, as storage only costs 0.005$/GB (1TB is $5). However if you're reading kinda often, I'd recommend against it, as it's not the fastest to read and bandwidth is 5c/GB (it's mainly intended for backup use cases).<p>- If you're doing a backup and REALLY not reading data very often, Online.net's C14 is a good choice. Storage is only EUR 0.002/GB (EUR 2/TB) but reading/writing (known as "operation" on their pages) costs EUR 0.01/GB.<p>- If you need a decent/low latency network, I'd pay for Google Cloud Storage or something similar.<p>- If you're doing basically anything else, I'd recommend a server from Kimsufi (as you've found), SoYouStart, Online.net, Hetzner or OVH.<p>- If you're fine with something _really_ low end, another user pointed out time4vps.eu which offers the lowest cost online storage I've seen (EUR 0.002/GB) with RAM, a CPU and bandwidth attached.
I frequently lurk on LowEndTalk forums; if you don't mind using vps from not-so-known providers, these are the two best storage vps deals on it:<p>» Time4VPS (<a href="https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/85707/" rel="nofollow">https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/85707/</a>)<p>1TB Storage for €48 bienially. Double the storage for double price.<p>» ZXHost (<a href="https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/85803/" rel="nofollow">https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/85803/</a>)<p>1TB Storage for €45 annually. Offer has ended though; but they might do it again in the future so I'll leave it here.<p>—<p>Otherwise, go for kimsufi/ovh/soyoustart/hetzner/scaleway special offer dedicated servers. They are the cheapest you can get for non-random providers.
Delimiter's full-ha cloud gives you 250GB space, 1 CPU, 1GB RAM for $6/month.<p>You could add more CPU/more RAM for just a few pennies. Disk space scales to 50TB per disk quite cheaply.<p><a href="https://cc.delimiter.com/cart/cloud-resource-pool/" rel="nofollow">https://cc.delimiter.com/cart/cloud-resource-pool/</a><p>Another option is ObjSpace (S3 compatible storage) but that would require you to run S3FS or similar.
<a href="http://delimiter.com/objspace-object-storage/" rel="nofollow">http://delimiter.com/objspace-object-storage/</a><p>[disclaimer I work for Delimiter]
TransIP sells you DigitalOcean-like VPSs, but also allow you to attach multi-TB NAS drives to them for a few bucks more. I've been a happy customer with a 2TB drive for a few years.<p><a href="https://www.transip.eu/vps/big-storage/" rel="nofollow">https://www.transip.eu/vps/big-storage/</a>
I use OVH. Kimsufi is basically the same company. I think it is their low end alias or white label.<p>I think Kimsufi limits you to 100Mbps which might not be enough bandwidth speed if you plan on server video or other large files to a bunch of people at once. OVH gives you a 1 Gbps unlimited pipe included.<p><a href="https://www.ovh.com/us/dedicated-servers/storage/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ovh.com/us/dedicated-servers/storage/</a>
Kimsufi are a great low-cost provider, I ran an Atom dedi with a 1TB disk with them for 2 years at around £12 a month. Never had any problems - great bandwidth to move data around, mostly used the big disk for offsite backups. However, an important consideration - they don't adjust their pricing for existing customers or allow the hardware to be upgraded. Around the 2-year mark, they dropped the price for the same server to just £3 a month and doubled the RAM. I was told if I wanted it, I'd have to give up my current server and move everything to a brand-new one. They wouldn't drop the price, and when I asked about doubling the RAM, was told it wasn't an option. They then put the price of my dedi up not a month later. I cancelled the server and have run my own hardware since then.<p>Good for a specific use, but as the low price implies, there is no option to scale in future.
At <a href="https://MNX.io" rel="nofollow">https://MNX.io</a> we introduced an SSD cached storage VPS server -- 500GB starting at $7/month, available up to 40TB at $15/TB.
OVH Public Cloud Object Storage. It's $ 0.01 per GB for storage and transfer. Triple replicated with datacenters in Europe and Canada. It uses Open Stack Swift which has a nice api and tools.
Assuming it's possible (i.e. you don't need a POSIX file system), your best bet might be to use an Object Store like S3. It will most likely be by far the most cost effective solution.
Just chiming in with my experience. I have several different servers for personal projects on various OVH properties. So Kimsufi, SoYouStart, and OVH proper. They have all been great. The VPS option at OVH was nice too. 100Mbit connection, several TB of bandwidth for $5 / month. Never ran into any issues with their services, and will continue to use them for everything. Much better deal than anything else I have found.
I use Kimsufi for a load of small side projects. AFAIK they are decommissioned OVH servers. You lose RAID as well as some other features like fail-over IPs.
I use: <a href="https://indiehosters.net" rel="nofollow">https://indiehosters.net</a>
If you care about privacy you will land in the right hands, and you will support an interesting project on its own:
<a href="http://www.wired.com/2014/11/indie-hosters/" rel="nofollow">http://www.wired.com/2014/11/indie-hosters/</a>
Seen as you already mention Vultr as an option they actually have dedicated block storage plans: <a href="https://www.vultr.com/pricing/blockstorage/" rel="nofollow">https://www.vultr.com/pricing/blockstorage/</a><p>A 500GB SSD is $50/month which seems fairly reasonable. You can use it directly with a cheap VPS from them as well.
If you're already paying Dropbox there's a terabyte of space that might be useful with bonus backups, versioning and undeleting, a CLI too:<p><a href="http://www.dropboxwiki.com/tips-and-tricks/using-the-official-dropbox-command-line-interface-cli" rel="nofollow">http://www.dropboxwiki.com/tips-and-tricks/using-the-officia...</a>
FYI, DigitalOcean is rolling out expandable block storage summer 2016 (so any day now), so that might be a good way to go. Not a lot of information, but keep an eye on <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/features/storage/" rel="nofollow">https://www.digitalocean.com/features/storage/</a>. You may be able to ask support to manually add you to the beta if you need it <i>right now</i>. DigitalOcean is really good about going out of their way to win your business. Full disclosure: I have no relationship to DO other than being a happy customer.<p>If you're looking at mostly static assets though, why not just upload them to S3 and serve them directly from there (or via a Cloudfront distribution)? EC2 boxes are fairly inexpensive as well, and there's all kind of automation tools for provisioning your AWS resources + configuring them.
Kimsufi's problem is the lack of redundancy, if the single drive on a box dies then you're not going to see your data again.<p>However, given the low price you could rent them in pairs and replicate the data using something like DRBD. Depending on your comfort level, this can be a very viable and cost effective option, or a system administration nightmare. If it's the latter, then definitely look into an object storage solution if your applications are compatible with that.<p>By the way, I've written an ebook which tries to help people make sense of the various hosting options available on the market today, perhaps it can be useful to you. The book site is<p><a href="https://www.hostingforappdevelopers.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.hostingforappdevelopers.com</a>
The one's listed here are great. Been using one for over a year now.<p><a href="http://oneprovider.com/dedicated-servers/paris-france" rel="nofollow">http://oneprovider.com/dedicated-servers/paris-france</a>
I use kimsufi to host a side project and so far they have been really good. Switched away from Hetzner.<p>Running multiple dockerized applications on a dedicated host is a good way to save on running costs until things pick up speed.
The best bang for buck I have found so far for large storage hosting is the slot hosting option from <a href="http://www.delimiter.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.delimiter.com</a>, where you mail in your own hard-drive and they provide you with a local VPS that can mount it in an Atlanta data center for $100/yr. I sent a 6TB drive. I then run other cheap VPS's (usually on the east coast for lower latency) that mount the drive via sshfs.
Almost everyone here suggest Object Storage which I too think is the best option for your case. Then you can modulate computing power or even technology (VPS, cloud instance, PaaS, or containers) as you will.<p>Some providers like us (I am CEO at Exoscale) bill the compute by the minute and allow to resize the direct attached disk even on small 5$/mo 512mb instances.
I know what you mean about needing a solution with lots of storage. I have Linode servers, and I'm at 90% disk space usage on one of them. They just upgraded the ram on all servers, but what I really need is more disk space. I'm nowhere near hitting the bandwidth limit, just need more space.
I use <a href="https://backupsy.com/" rel="nofollow">https://backupsy.com/</a> - essentially a cheap VPS with slow but generous storage options.<p>I think ovh also has an option for 'lots of space but don't worry about the other things'.
Check out Dediserve - <a href="https://dediserve.com" rel="nofollow">https://dediserve.com</a>. They let you customise the resources (including SSD and NAS storage) as per your needs. Moreover, their performance and support are great too.
"would require sizable amounts of storage space (but not much of other resources)"<p>Self-hosting would be your best option if your bandwidth needs are modest. Your data is 'small' enough to fit on a local drive.
Have you checked out ServerHub? They are very generous with storage; <a href="http://serverhub.com/vps/ssd-cached" rel="nofollow">http://serverhub.com/vps/ssd-cached</a>
I use OVH SSD VPS (the cheapest offer) and it has been working nicely for me.<p>However if you select your server to be in a region requests from other regions might be a bit slow.
I've been quite happy with Delimiter [1]. Cheap, but relatively beefy dedicated servers and S3-compatible object storage. You can use promo code B6NFT66YU7ZN to get 6% off in perpetuity (disclaimer: that's my affiliate code).<p>[1] <a href="https://www.delimiter.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.delimiter.com</a>
VPSDime (<a href="http://vpsdime.com/" rel="nofollow">http://vpsdime.com/</a>). Their largest VPS package is<p>4 CPU<p>36GB Memory<p>180GB SSD Space<p>12TB Traffic Limit<p>10Gbit Connection<p>$42.00/mo. Lot of room for multiple sites.
OpenShift by Red Hat. Upgrade to silver package, they just want your credit card but you don't have to pay anything if you run 3 small gears for an example. If you give them your CC, you get things like own domains etc. for free. For my simple side projects, it's perfect and easy to scale.<p>I can't remember about storage costs, but you can find out!