Why is Hosted Disk Space So Expensive?

dhclab49 asks: "Recently, I wrote a data-driven web application for a customer, and when it came time for them to select a hosting company, what I found was that most hosting companies charge a LOT for disk space. Most of them have accounts for $10-$30 per month, a bit more if you add in a database account. However, they almost all limit you to around 250MB of disk space, with extra space costing like $1/month per additional MB of storage. The app I wrote manages the customer's workflow and is meant to allow them to generate PDF documents and store them online, so I really need a few gigs. In an era where hard disks cost about a buck a gig and are getting cheaper by the day, how can hosting companies charge $1000 per gigabyte per YEAR?! And are there any alternatives out there for hosting a data-driven website at a reliable datacenter with a few GB of space for under $500/mo?"

Comments

why?

[Tumbleweed]

Because they CAN, that's why.

Your solution: Co-Location! Mmm, co-looooo...the very word makes my tummy quiver. :)

Also note - if you're storing files that big, you're probably, oh, I don't know, transferring them, too - so watch out for those bandwidth fees - they're a killer!

cost of backup + admin?

[blackcoot]

disk space for gigabytes worth of data is a relative non-issue --- it's possible for home machines to hold a terrabyte or more worth of data. the question is, how much does it cost to back that data up? my dad sells storage area networks and tape backup systems and i can tell you that there's a lot more than just having some monkey cpio / tar the filesytem --- there's a lot of potentially very expensive hardware and software involved for full backup stuff. just my $0.02

Re:cost of backup + admin?

[BrynM]

The most important thing to remember is uptime. It's the business of these companies to make your data available to you. This means redundancy, uninteruptable power supplies, dedicated bandwidth, monitoring, phone support.... You get the point. Hosting and data storage companies are a lot more than your buddy down the street throwing an extra drive on his DSL line. When looking at a host, remember what else they do and compare that. You can get quite a bang for the buck(s).

There is a lot more than just HD cost

[GenBradly]

Anyone who has or currently works in the hosting industry knows there is a lot more to the cost of operations than just HD space. Of course, when you use the word, "Datacenter" are you then talking about high-speed SCSI drives in some sort of RAID array? With that, even HD's can get expensive. Colo is the way to go, just setup a cheap server with big IDE drives and maybe an ARAID or something and get someone to stick it in their room for $200 a month.

Uhhh.....

[smoondog]

Contrary to popular belief, disk space can be expensive and fast, big disks are really expensive. While IDE family of hard drives are very, very cheap and quite large, they aren't very good for high volume server applications. Instead of going to pricewatch, go to dell.com and price out a big net appliance disk with a fast interconnect. Hmm, a quick check shows a dell 770N net attached storage box at $14K with only 800 Gigs (raw). Hosting (hosing?) many domains on a single computer is going to require really fast disk, not just a single 5400 rpm drive....

-Sean

Home storage vs enterprise storage.

[Zapman]

You're used to 'home storage' prices. Look at pricewatch, find a good brand of EIDE, and just get it.

They're looking at 'enterprise storage'. We have 11 tera of raw disk on an EMC. It cost $2 million. The useable storage out of it is around 3-4 tera, after counting mirroring, and third mirror break off for backups, etc, etc, etc.

These drives use MCA (iirc) interconnects to a disk backplane, and fiber channel interconnects between disk boards and the front end san switch. The computers are fiber connected into the san switch as well, and the JNI cards (client end of a SAN connection) for this are NOT cheep.

To Online storage companies, downtime costs serious money. They can't afford the downtime. That's why their storage costs real money. Then they pass it on to you.

If you need real amounts of data, you don't want a hosting service, you want a CoLo service (They give you rack space, and an internet connection. You provide the box). If you want, you can put a desktop with 2x140 gb drives, and you'll get what reliability you can out of it (most IDE drives are warrenteed for 1 year for a reason). If you want the thing to last, get a server class, rack mountable server from (dell|compaq|ibm|penguin computers). You'll be happy you did. Mirror the drives (preferably in hardware) so you can loose a disk without killing your service.

Look At The Whole Picture

[nathanh]

In an era where hard disks cost about a buck a gig and are getting cheaper by the day, how can hosting companies charge $1000 per gigabyte per YEAR?!

Because disks are cheap but backups, power, controllers, arrays, racks, floor space and *technicians* are all still expensive. Be very wary of any company that offers "cheap" disk storage; they're almost certainly inexperienced and/or untrustworthy. $1000/gig sounds about right.

Because people pay it

[linuxwrangler]

I have noticed the same thing - cost for disk space seems way out of line but the answer in part is that it costs that much because people are willing to pay for it.

But don't assume that raw disk cost is the most important factor. ISPs generally host lots of sites on a bunch of pretty generic standardized boxes.

Here are some other factors that will drive the cost up:

Good hardware: RAID/hot-swap/SCSI is going to cost a lot more than a discount IDE drive.

Maintenance: It's not just the cost of a single drive - it's the parts and labor cost of replacing failed units as well.

Backups: Whatever you store they have to backup so they have to consider all the costs associated with data protection.

Machine capacity: If they have sized their standard machine to host, say, 200 sites and partitioned out the data space accordingly then you can think of someone who uses 10 times the normal data quota as really using up 10 users worth of capacity on that machine as a whole. Where there are bandwidth guarantees a similar situation exists.

I'm sure there are other considerations as well but considering the price pressure on ISPs these days I'm sure that you could find plenty who would offer cheap disk space to get you as a customer if they would make money doing it.

One option

[Omega Hacker]

A friend of mine and I are starting up a company called PDXcolo.net. We're using User-mode Linux to host virtual machines, where you get your own copy of the distro, your own RAM, etc., on a shared machine. You get full root access to the machine, and can (within reason) do anything you want with it. Our base packge (for $20/mo) includes ~64MHz of proc, 64MB of RAM, 2GB of disk (your distro is *not* part of that unless you make significant changes), and 10GB of transfer per month. Additional disk is only $1/GB/mo, and bandwidth is $1.50/GB. 'Machines' are available in power-of-two multiples of that basic config, so far up to 8 'slots', or 512/512/16/80. More can be arranged special-case.

If you're interested, email beta@pdxcolo.net and we'll get you set up soon (merchant account troubles are our main slowdown right now) on our initial machine. That box has 2x 200GB disks in a RAID-1 config. We're planning on doing something on the order of a 3x RAID-5 arrangement on all new hardware, and/or a significant SAN setup.

Our machines are located in a well-respected datacenter in downtown Portland (hence 'pdx', our airport code), and as we build up our infrastructure daily backups will be available over and above the RAID on the hosts. We've got one circuit so far that we've pushed to 25Mbps, an d will be adding more circuits as we get our first customers.

So, if what you're doing doesn't require mega processor or RAM usage, but lots of disk, you might consider using one of our virtual machines to host your app.

Finally, a business model that works!

[Rick the Red]

1) Buy hard disks at $1/gig
2) Rent disk space online at $1000/gig/year
3) Profit!

Shhhh!

[Lord Bitman]

You'll ruin EVERYTHING!
The reason it's like that is because every time someone notices, they start their own hosting company, fuckwit!

The Ads man

[Drakon]

heh, ever thought of reading the ads on slashdot? They're right there across the top of the screen!
well some of the advertizers, ServerBeach comes to mind, will give you a complete machine, with a 60 gig drive for 99 dollars per month (450 gb transfer)
this machine can also be used for things like mail, ftp, or whatever
99x12=1188/60=19.8 per gb per year
and that's not just disk space

Providers

[pipingguy]

I'd like to see some kind of online comparison of the major providers' services.

-cost/month
-control panel?
-MBs
-monthly traffic
-how many subdomains
-how many email/aliases
-can I do stuff.example.com vs. example.com/stuff