Cloud Storage Servers
We have an ever increasing amount of personal media content. And these days, being available on the road is almost becoming a requirement. Depending on your needs, a home NAS just may not be sufficient anymore.
With cloud services continuing to provide affordable services, the question for me today is whether it's affordable enough to store all of my media content "in the cloud". By "in the cloud", I really mean just available on the internet from anywhere. For myself, I have several personal git/subversion repositories, photo repositories, and ideally DVDs and other large media. Not counting the DVD's, I'm in need of roughly 200+GB of data. 250-300GB would be ideal to last me a while. However, including DVD content would easily bring me to about 1TB. For solving my immediate needs, I'm aiming for finding a solution to my 250-300GB problem.
The services I've found of late with a brief synopsis of their differences. However this article is primarily focused on cost.
| Service | Virtualization | Annual Price for ~200GB | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
| Backupsy | KVM | $120 / 250GB | Dallas, TX; New York, NY; Chicago, IL; Denver, CO; Buffalo, NY; Los Angeles, CA; Netherlands, UK |
| VPS Cheap | (unknown) | $180 / 200GB | Chicago |
| BudgetVM | OpenVZ | $132 / 200GB | Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami |
| 1TB VPS | (unknown) | $300 / 1TB | Phoenix, AZ |
| Time4VPS | OpenVZ | $60 / 512GB | Lithuania, Vilnius |
| Digital Ocean | KVM | $300 / 200GB | New York, San Francisco, Amsterdam, Singapore, London, Toronto, Bangalore |
| VirMach | KVM | $42 / 500GB | Buffalo, NY |
| LetBox | KVM | $42 / 500GB | Los Angeles |
| Impact VPS | OpenVZ | $144 / 250GB | Seattle |
| BuyVM | KVM | $84 / 250GB | Las Vegas, New Jersey, Luxembourg |
Backupsy
Their prices are currently:
| Capacity | Price/mo | $/GB/mo | $/year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 250GB | $10 | $0.04 | $120 |
| 500GB | $20 | $0.04 | $240 |
| 750GB | $30 | $0.04 | $360 |
| 1000GB | $40 | $0.04 | $480 |
| 1250GB | $50 | $0.04 | $600 |
| 1500GB | $60 | $0.04 | $720 |
| 1750GB | $70 | $0.04 | $840 |
| 2000GB | $80 | $0.04 | $960 |
However in contacting their customer support, they do not recommend using it for small random-access files as I would for repositories.
In addition, it is not entirely clear whether it would be within their terms of use. I suspect it would be okay for personal repositories. But group access of regular projects may trigger warnings from them.
VPS Cheap
Their budget prices right now are: Their prices are currently:
| Capacity | Price/mo | $/GB/mo | $/year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100GB | $7.99 | $0.0799 | $96 |
| 200GB | $14.99 | $0.07495 | $180 |
| 300GB | $29.99 | $0.09996 | $360 |
The price are competitive, but not really "a deal".
BudgetVM
Budget VM's current SSD VPS offerings are:
| Capacity | Price/mo | $/GB/mo | $/year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 150GB | $9.99 | $0.0666 | $120 |
| 200GB | $14.99 | $0.07495 | $180 |
| 250GB | $19.99 | $0.07996 | $240 |
| 350GB | $39.99 | $0.11425 | $480 |
| 450GB | $59.99 | $0.13331 | $720 |
They also have a "Lightning Fast OpenVZ" category (though both categories use OpenVZ):
| Capacity | Price/mo | $/GB/mo | $/year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 150GB | $7.99 | $0.05326 | $96 |
| 200GB | $10.99 | $0.05495 | $132 |
| 250GB | $13.99 | $0.05596 | $168 |
| 300GB | $24.99 | $0.08330 | $300 |
| 400GB | $49.99 | $0.12497 | $600 |
Virtualization Technology: OpenVZ (for both plans listed above) Budget VM's prices are also reasonably competitive. If your only interest is storage, their pricing ends up costing you more per GB as you expand.
1TB VPS
1TBVPS is an interesting player in the space. They offer a no-frills service with little in the way of service/support and less in the way of options. However they make up for it by offering extremely competitive specs and pricing. Their pricing is currently:
| Capacity | Price/mo | $/GB/mo | $/year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 TB | $24.99 | $0.02499 | $300 |
| 2 TB | $49.99 | $0.02499 | $600 |
Their parent company is I/O Flood. Neither website makes any mention of their type of virtualization technology. In addition I/O Flood (as of this weekend) has terrible network responsiveness. Their web pages easily take over 10 seconds to load, which does not inspire a lot of confidence.
Time4VPS
Time4VPS looks to be an ideal service if you can be satisfied with a server in Europe/Lithuania/Vilnius.
| Capacity | Price/mo | $/GB/mo | $/year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 512 GB | $4.99 | $0.00974 | $60 |
| 1024 GB | $7.49 | $0.00731 | $90 |
| 2048 GB | $12.49 | $0.00609 | $150 |
| 4096 GB | $22.49 | $0.00549 | $270 |
| 8192 GB | $42.49 | $0.00518 | $510 |
They offer discounts for annual/bi-annual terms. Their pricing is in Euros. The amounts given are adjusted by 1.25 to account for current exchange rates/taxes.
Digital Ocean Block Storage
Digital Ocean Block Storage is a flat rate of $0.10/GB, but also requires a server to be attached to it (starting at $5/mo). They are certainly not as cheap as the other services. However their block storage is expandable, allowing you to easily grow as your needs grow. They have servers around the world. Their block storage offering is available in 100GB increments. A few numbers are given here for comparison purposes:
| Capacity | Price/mo | $/GB/mo | $/year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 200 GB | $25 | $0.1250 | $300 |
| 500 GB | $55 | $0.1100 | $660 |
| 1000 GB | $105 | $0.1050 | $1260 |
| 2000 GB | $205 | $0.1025 | $2460 |
To ensure a somewhat fair comparison, $5/server was included in the above prices.
VirMach
VirMach has a very competitive storage offering:
| Capacity | Price/mo | $/GB/mo | $/year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 500 GB | $3.50 | $0.007 | $42 |
| 1000 GB | $7.00 | $0.007 | $84 |
| 2000 GB | $14.00 | $0.007 | $168 |
| 4000 GB | $28.00 | $0.007 | $336 |
They have some questionable reviews around the net. However, they have been in business since at least 2005, so they are fairly well established.
LetBox
LetBox also has some very competitive pricing for a storage VPS:
| Capacity | Price/mo | $/GB/mo | $/year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 500 GB | $3.50 | $0.007 | $42 |
| 1000 GB | $7.00 | $0.007 | $84 |
Impact VPS
| Capacity | Price/mo | $/GB/mo | $/year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 250 GB | $12.00 | $0.048 | $144 |
| 500 GB | $24.00 | $0.048 | $288 |
| 750 GB | $36.00 | $0.048 | $432 |
| 1000 GB | $48.00 | $0.048 | $576 |
| 2000 GB | $96.00 | $0.048 | $1152 |
| 3000 GB | $144.00 | $0.048 | $1728 |
BuyVM
| Capacity | Price/mo | $/GB/mo | $/year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 250 GB | $7.00 | $0.028 | $84 |
| 500 GB | $15.00 | $0.03 | $180 |
| 1000 GB | $30.00 | $0.03 | $360 |
| 2000 GB | $60.00 | $0.03 | $720 |