Webhosting For A Large Art Project?

First time accepted submitter heleneleh writes "I'm in a class at school on Electronic Writing and for my final project I'm trying to upload the entire contents of my computer to a webserver that will preserve the directory structure (I plan on using rsync so that it is continually updated as my files change). I need about 500 GB of space, and I'm willing to spend some money, so I was hoping Slashdot could suggest a reliable hosting service for that type of project. Traffic shouldn't be too high, but the storage space and ssh access are key. If there's another way to do this, I'd love to know about it." I've noticed a lot of VPS providers charge almost nothing for processor time and RAM, but disk is still pretty expensive.

Comments

Dreamhost

[epdp14]

I use dream host... "unlimited space and traffic" they really mean don't go crazy and try to host a google.com mirror off of it. Its pretty cheap, I pay $8 a month. You can run cron jobs, mysql databases, etc. I've been happy with it. I know it is karma/referral whoring but you can use my referral code and get a free domain registration: FOLLOWTHEHORIZON (if you already have a domain just use DREAMBUCKS for $50 off your first year). http://www.dreamhost.com/r.cgi?303747

Re:Dreamhost

[morari]

Dreamhost is great! I've been using them for years to host about a dozen different sites. Nothing [i]quite[/i] as big as what the posters is looking for, but they do claim "unlimited space and traffic". If nothing else, their tech support is ridiculously amazing. When you contact them, you actually get someone that you can understand and that knows exactly what they're doing... even in some of the obtuse situations I've put them in. :)

Re:Dreamhost

[0100010001010011]

I'm probably pushing 1TB of photos on DreamHost. They're maybe 98% uptime but for something like I use it for it really doesn't matter. For what I pay it's great.

Plus one of their employees wrote Ceph. (A FOSS distributed file system).

Re:Dreamhost

[dreemernj]

without having to sign the rights over to facebook.

And this way you can do crazy things like require a person authenticate themselves before they can see the picture vs someplace like Facebook where every picture is publicly accessible.

WHT Forum

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/ - This would be a good site to review.

Re:WHT Forum

[billcopc]

This.

If you have the patience to read reviews for a half hour or so, you will hear all the pros and cons of any given hosting company. On top of that, they often post exclusive deals in that forum which can be quite a bargain. It is *THE* go-to for hosting discussion. Very highly recommended!

Or you could go the no-brainer route and get a cheap dedicated server from a place like Leaseweb. I've been with them for years, and I think they have US-based "bargain servers" starting around $80 or so, but that's entirely self-managed, so you need to know enough to set up your own Apache/SQL stack on CentOS or Ubuntu or whatever the kids are using these days. Like I said, I've been there for 5+ years, their service used to be ass back then but now it's top-notch, and the price is hard to beat for what you're getting. Traffic is cheap there too, heck you can get 100mb unmetered for under 2 bills if you don't mind slightly boring hardware.

Re:VPS for server, storage for storage

[InsightIn140Bytes]

Uh, transfer in and out of S3 is really costly. It's one of the reasons I didn't change my servers there. I would have for processing power and everything else, but the bandwidth is extremely costly.

Consider using a CDN

[firegate]

You should consider using a Cloud CDN like Rackspace CloudFiles or Amazon S3. They're designed purely for cheap, efficient and fast storage and delivery. While you can't SSH into one, you can certainly set up rsync without incident and the data can be called from a site hosted anywhere.

If it's only for your class

[denshao2]

I would host it at home. If it's only for a professor to see, you should not be getting a lot of traffic. Just keep it on a machine that is separate from anything important.

Re:600 gigs storage, $5.83/month

[sandytaru]

I switched from a $15/month host to a $3/month host (Maiahost.) The previous host was unreliable, had frequent downtime, and was running on some fairly archaic web technology. (At one point, they lost ALL my data with no local backups. That was the last straw; I ran my own backups once a week but that was still a few days of SQL data totally gone.) When I switched, I've had access to instant tech support, 0 unplanned downtime so far, and a library of amazing CMS systems that they're happy to help me implement at no additional cost. Love them to bits. The marketplace for hosting is very competative now, and the overpriced unreliable ones are going to fail eventually.