Ask HN: Most affordable method to host a lot of files | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Most affordable method to host a lot of files

6 pointsdutchbrit13 comments

I'm working on a file sharing site (more info here for those interested: http://blog.serve2.com)

I'm looking for an affordable, stable and scalable solution, where I can host a large amount of files with fast upload speeds for people downloading the files. What solution would you suggest?

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People are touting S3, but you pay twice -- storage and transfer. Using the most inexpensive options with S3, a 1 gigabyte file (with reduced redundancy) with 1 download per month would run you $0.21.

Even without the one download this would still cost you $0.093 just to keep the file!

Let's ramp up and assume you have 1TB of storage and 250GB / month of transfer. How much is that?

STORAGE: 1000 GB x $0.093 = $93.00 TRANSFER: 1000 GB x $0.120 = $120.00

TOTAL: $213.00

I should note the above does not include any servers which will actually run the websites.

Lets compare this to hosting your own (ie - dedicated):

I have a 1.5 TB RAID-I server with 1.8 TB transfer per month on a 100MB port on a month-to-month contract.

STORAGE: 1.5TB RAID-I TRANSFER: 1.8TB

Total : $123.00 / month

It is a 8-core xeon with 4GB RAM -- I run a LAPP stack with 6 Cores dedicated to ffmpeg and image conversions. Waayyyy faster than cloud.

This is more of a hosting and infrastructure question. I recommend bringing this question to the community at webhostingtalk.com.

Yes, you will have to grow into these numbers, but that can happen pretty quickly.

Just curious, who are you hosting it with?

currently at 800hosting.com. I got a slightly better deal because of an error in their order system (now fixed). It's only been a month but not problems so far.

If you're building a file sharing site, aren't the logistics of sharing files exactly what your core competency is supposed to be? Why would you outsource that?

Your first blog post is an admission of copyright infringement... and it's a video of a guy that's probably going to be imprisoned for doing the same thing. Are you sure you want to get into this business?

You may aslo take a look at Windows Azure Storage https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/calculator/

for simplicity and reducing time to market, outsource it to S3 or an S3 API-compatible storage provider. you can always buy disk boxes down the road and slap an S3-like API in front of them.

in addition, you could use WebRTC to build a BitTorrent-like P2P distribution system that's native to the web, where your servers act as "seeds." this is to reduce your bandwidth costs for >1 clients downloading/streaming the same file.

Out of interest you mentioned in that blog post that you received a DMCA notice for the video. Who was that notice from?

TVWorks Limited

I like your idea, and the website! S3 is probably your best way to go.

Why not use S3 with cloudfront.

Isn't S3 really expensive?

I suppose it depends on one's definition of expensive, but it is simple enough to see their pricing: http://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/

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