Amazon Announces Unlimited Cloud Storage Plans

An anonymous reader sends word that Amazon is now offering unlimited cloud storage plans to compete with Google Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive. "Last year, Amazon gave a boost to its Prime members when it launched a free, unlimited photo storage for them on Cloud Drive. Today, the company is expanding that service as a paid offering to cover other kinds of content, and to users outside of its loyalty program. Unlimited Cloud Storage will let users get either unlimited photo storage or "unlimited everything" — covering all kinds of media from videos and music through to PDF documents — respectively for $11.99 or $59.99 per year."

Comments

MY data in AMAZON's cloud ??

[vikingpower]

Never. Never ever. I run a couple of servers here at home, and have my own 30 TB cloud. Pricing model: simple. I buy used servers, at about e 300 apiece, and stick in new hdds. For 30 TB and a three-year write-off, that is € 625 / year. Expensive ? Yes. But what I get is priceless: total control

Re:MY data in AMAZON's cloud ??

[vikingpower]

A used HP Microserver ( Gen 8 ), its standard, out-of the box Celeron processor replaced by a Xeon E3, needs about 50 Watts, idling, and maxes out at 75 Watts. It manages 8 TB in a RAID array. If you call that high electricity, I don't know what your mental model of "low electricity" is.

Re:MY data in AMAZON's cloud ??

[vikingpower]

From a hardware point of view, yes, that is too short. Hdds last longer than that - and I am familiar with the post mentioned by you. But my tax advisor, who also does all of my accounting, leaves me no choice but to ( financially ) write them off in 3 years.

Re:MY data in AMAZON's cloud ??

[nospam007]

"But what I get is priceless: total control"

Unless there's a fire, a break-in, an earthquake, a tsunami...
Or do you also have backups all over the world? After all, you pay 10 times the Amazon price.

Re:MY data in AMAZON's cloud ??

[N1AK]

Exactly. It sounds incredibly stupid.

What he's doing isn't stupid if he is willing to pay the ~$1k+ premium of running & maintaining that set up + viable backup for the benefits he feels it provides.

It is however incredibly stupid to compare it to online solutions like Google Drive and this Amazon service. It's like comparing buying chopped tomatoes with having your own tomato farm and processing plant because you want to know the origin and factory conditions.

Re: MY data in AMAZON's cloud ??

[AngryLibertarian]

What's your offsite backup method to protect against fires?

Re:MY data in AMAZON's cloud ??

[vikingpower]

True. I don't outsource any risk. Did you ever read "The Orange Book", on risk management ? It is a British government document, and considered rather as a classic on the topic. The TL;DR version: you only outsource risks if and when there are no new risks attached to the act of outsourcing itself. In my case, I consider there would be such extra risk: Amazon is a corporation I can't control, and it can change its policies any time. ( Please do note I do not even mention the NSA and the US state. There certainly is risk there, but I have no way of quantifying it. ) Moreover, once my data is with Amazon, getting it away from there ( if I ever want to do that ) becomes a guarantee for severe headaches, and in that case I would end up building my own cloud anyway.

Re:MY data in AMAZON's cloud ??

[N1AK]

So, you've come back to respond and highlight how your use case is even less appropriate for on-line storage providers than it already seemed... somewhat emphasising my point about it being stupid to compare what you're doing to online storage solutions like this when they are entirely different.

Re:MY data in AMAZON's cloud ??

[Bobberly]

That comparison is only fair if the world would be shocked and willing to pay to see photos of your tomatoes in compromising positions.

Re:MY data in AMAZON's cloud ??

[dave420]

So your time is free? With encryption it doesn't matter who gets a copy of your files, making your "total control" argument seem rather silly. And you only end up with 30TB as well. Ouch.

Re:MY data in AMAZON's cloud ??

[dave420]

It's not really your own cloud, just a centralised bunch of disks with a poor backup system. Getting your data from Amazon is easy, obviously, as that's the whole point. I've been using them for years and never had problems in that regard. Couple that with encryption, and you can take the benefits of Amazon's system (low cost, geographical spread, high availability, high speeds) without the down-sides. You can also couple Amazon's offerings with their virtual machines, something you can't do with your attempt of a cloud.

Re:MY data in AMAZON's cloud ??

[nehumanuscrede]

Curious what flavor of Cisco Gig switch you're running. I have a twenty four port Cisco 2970 Gig switch that sits unused in my closet because it draws ~70 watts all by itself at idle. The ASA will pull down about ~20 watts at idle, but will ramp up to about 90 or so under sustained load.

Re:MY data in AMAZON's cloud ??

[dave420]

Your second house transparently gives you your stuff back? Awesome!

Re:Encrypt client side

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Based on their API reference 3rd-party apps that do whatever you want on the client side certainly look doable enough.

Obviously, the various stuff about "Access your files on all your devices!" and "Build into all your Amazon devices!" and whatnot is going to be less useful, so they are clearly expecting most customers to not do that(and implicitly encouraging them not to); but the service itself doesn't appear to have any objections to you dropping encrypted blobs into it.

(Now, what Amazon would do if you were to use something like PNGdrive, to get the advantages of the rather more expensive 'unlimited files' tier using only the 'unlimited photos' tier, I don't know; but I suspect that they would be less happy...)

unlimited?

[ei4anb]

I wonder if Kim Dotcom has an account yet?

Ehhhhhhhhcellent!

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

Now I have somewhere to put my advertised "unlimited retension" Usenet servers!

Link to the official announcement?

[oneiros27]

Why do people link to blog posts that neglect to link to the original source?

A little digging, and it seems on the surface to have similar restrictions as BackBlaze, as it's only for "for personal, non-commercial purposes".

So I can't store my ~3PB of telescope data on there, or even just the jpeg browse images.

The terms of use mention that you can share files .. but do they charge you for downloads, as with their other cloud service offerings, or is that included in the 'unlimited'?

  (I might be an old fogey, but I remember when you used to link to a blog post to set context *and* link to the original source in the summary, rather than just some shallow 'I've cherry picked the info'. At least Roland and Coondoggie linked back to their original sources, even if Coondoggies were almost exclusively regurgitation of press releases + a links back to Network World))

linux?

[kharchenko]

Will they have a linux client?

Yeah, no thanks Amazon, I'll stick to my own NAS.

[hack slash]

"We may change, suspend or discontinue the Service, or any part of it, at any time without notice."

Now all I need is 1gbps bandwidth and no data caps

[NotDrWho]

Guess I better move to Europe.