cloud storage

[Gunder]

Last time I looked into it I gave up because the cost was astronomical. Anyone know of a good cloud storage platform to host 12+ TB of data? I'll need to be able to access it from multiple machines in multiple locations... I.E. while traveling. Ideally I'd like to upload 100TB but gave up on that so just looking for a place for the most important files.

[~mikey b]

Why don't you just let them float free in the sky?

Free the clouds!

[milton]

12TB is a ton of data to keep online for quick access. Looks like ~$1000/mo on Amazon S3 and MS Azure, plus bandwidth fees.

Amazon Glacier has $.01/GB/Month but it is more of an archival solution. Dropbox Team tops out at 10TB for $6420/year.

If you have a fat pipe at home/office you could drop a NAS box in and host it yourself.

[iscariot]

Long term it would be cheaper to buy an average desktop with a hudge amount of storage and set it up as a server that you can access from anywhere. Infinitely expandable through both adding external drives and upgrading the internal drives over the years. Plus it more secure from digital theft than cloud storage, although a desktop is more susceptible to actual theft, fire, etc...if that's a concern.

[RShea]

The amount and volume of the storage you are asking for is going to be a big issue. Even if the budget would allow 12 TB of data- how long and how fast of a connection are you going to need to access all that data (40 hours or more with very fast connections both ways)? If you say you do not need access to all of it- then why are you stating that is the amount you need?

Local access speeds would be better unless there is a very small portion of the data that is needed on a regular basis.

If it is just data backup and then you only incrementally upload files as they change- then that would be slightly different.

[skimaxpower]

12TB is an incredible amount of porn. Well done, sir.

[Gurutasker]

Is it 12TB of actual data, or is it a lot of replicated information? It may not be anywhere nearest that size with compression/de-duplication.

[keipow]

I am guessing it is raw ski photo and video.

You can convert all of the photo into lossless compressed formats. (e.g. PNG with no compression.

It's cheapest if you bought a blu-ray burner and burned a couple copies for each data.

Index/arrange your data well, and carry around the index. Have a friend find the blu-ray from home and fedex it to you when you need it. Fedex next day will be cheaper and faster than downloading.

The most often accessed data can just be blu-ray disks that you carry personally. While traveling, carry a blu-ray burner in a mobile USB3.0 enclosure and burn/read at will.

[Gunder]

It's 12 TB of ski porn and its all actual data. Got to keep it in .dng too, so no changing formats. I dont do blue-ray as those and dvd's have a finite shelf life and do go bad over time... Trust me I used dvd's when starting out and that was a major pain in the ass and those discs ended up going bad over the years anyways. Presently I have two servers set up in that mirror each other, so I have back ups of backups, but I am looking for offsite storage in case of fire / theft and another access point incase I have issues connecting to my personal servers while traveling.

[RShea]

If you just want backup- that maybe doable since on a daily basis only a small percentage of the data would change. Your budget is going to have to be pretty high and you are going to need to figure the time required each day for the incremental transfers. As for the issues with connecting to your servers while on the road- don't know what your issues are (unreliable internet connection or the remote access method you are using??) The backup in the cloud could just be used to request the file(s) and restore selected items to your laptop instead of the servers...

[Tuckerman]

Unlimited storage $159 per year.

http://www.carbonite.com/en/v2/online-backup

[RShea]

Unlimited storage $159 per year.

http://www.carbonite.com/en/v2/online-backup

Good luck with using a home users account for this much data, Terms of Service include Termination for things like: (4) use the Services in a manner that results in excessive bandwidth usage, as determined by Carbonite,

I would bet that would kick in really fast.

Gunder: 3 questions - what is your monthly budget? What amount of data is changing on a daily basis (and how much does it grow with new footage in say a month)? And how fast of internet connection do you have?

[Gunder]

Good luck with using a home users account for this much data, Terms of Service include Termination for things like: (4) use the Services in a manner that results in excessive bandwidth usage, as determined by Carbonite,

I would bet that would kick in really fast.

Gunder: 3 questions - what is your monthly budget? What amount of data is changing on a daily basis (and how much does it grow with new footage in say a month)? And how fast of internet connection do you have?

Budget is around $100 a month, obviously would like to spend less.
I tend to add 32~100 GB daily all winter.
Speed: 11ms ping, Download 48.68Mbps Upload 10.98 MBps

I could move one of the server's off site to my dad's place and use that as my own cloud, but then I'd be looking at another business class ip connection at $200 a month so I dont want to do that.

[Buster Highmen]

Budget is around $100 a month, obviously would like to spend less.

You'd be better served buying a box of thumbdrives and being really anal about labelling them.
Fuck these ip vampires.

[RShea]

Your budget as I expected is probably not anywhere near high enough and you are dreaming if you think you will get a reliable solution at that price. Bandwidth- I'd have to do some calculations but you can figure the existing numbers for your connection at a number of sites like this:
http://www.backblaze.com/speedtest/ and see how long it will take to do basic transfers on your connection.

Your best solution would be to figure out what the issues are with the remote access to your existing servers for the remote (and you are still at the mercy of the guest internet you are using while on the road for any connection or 4G cellular if you try and bring your own bandwidth everywhere you go). While traveling can you carry a TB or more of replicated data to work with? To use an auto analogy: You asking for a race car that can do 200 mph on the track (local transfer speeds) - but as soon as you get away from the track (office or home where the servers are) and on regular roads is limited by other traffic and speed limits on the roads...

Then buy a pair of Network Storage boxes, back-up your servers periodically locally and shuffle them back and forth to your Dad's place or a bank vault in rotation.

Cheapest storage probably would be Amazon's Glacier (and not designed to be remote from anywhere friendly) http://aws.amazon.com/glacier/#importexport is going to be more than the $100 budget just for the basic storage monthly without any transfers. And you have to use their API's for the transfer solutions (which would of course be a one time expense to get some programming code to handle that).

[saxon]

Crashplan is an interesting solution (www.crashplan.com). Particularly the peer-to-peer solution it supports. If you did the whole thing about putting one of the servers at your Dad's, it may not take the amount of bandwidth you assume it does (just do the initial sync with it on your local network, and schedule the updates in the middle of the night, or something). It does data de-duplication and compression, but depending on your data that could be huge or very little.

No matter the solution, if your budget is only $100/month you're not going to get rapid and convenient access to your data from anywhere (at anywhere near current rates), and you'll be lucky just to get offsite backup for that cost. I think you'll end up with something of a mixture (if you can find a subset of your data you need rapid access to and run that off DropBox, etc., and do the rest more as a backup).

[bern43]

I pay about $4/month for Crashplan unlimited and beside the long initial upload it's been running without any problems. I've never used the peer-to-peer, but I've happy with Crashplan so far. Maybe set up a local Network Storage and then do the peer-to-peer with an offsite Network Storage box? I'm a fan of redundancy when it comes to backup. I use my desktop for work so I've got a RAID 1 to avoid downtime, Crashplan, and an external drive for backup.

[Gunder]

Thanks guys, that basically told me what I had hunched that all of the cloud services are still way overpriced for what they are offering.

[Wawawa]

I've been happy with Crashplan. They claim unlimited storage, so you should be fine there, even with many TB. Only $3-4/mo. As far as I know you can search your archive and retrieve individual files, you can access deleted versions of files, and it's pretty user friendly without being dumbed down.

Initial upload would be a bear - it took 5 days for me to upload 300GB of .NEFs, though that was over a slow-ish wifi connection. For $125 you can "seed" your backup with hard drives they'll ship you, and I would recommend you going that route. Never underestimate the bandwidth of a FedEx truck (high latency, though).

[CarveMan]

Amazon S3 tops out at 5TB

http://aws.amazon.com/s3/faqs/#How_m...ta_can_I_store

[Tuckerman]

Thanks guys, that basically told me what I had hunched that all of the cloud services are still way overpriced for what they are offering.

Storage price go down almost at the same rate as energy prices to run the storage goes up.

[wildstyle]

Live drive comes close at 10TB+ for $160 a month .... less if you pay a year upfront ...

http://www.livedrive.com/ForBusiness/Packages

[wildstyle]

I'm using DropBox and LiveDrive like this .. works a treat so far, i have 1.5TB with paid up Live drive and use Drop box for all my day to day work items using their free offering.

http://brainlog.coryzipperle.com/liv...both-services/

[PNWbrit]

cloud services are still way overpriced for what they are offering.

To be fair you're asking an awful lot.

It's a shitload of data with only $100 a month pockets.

It probably will get a lot cheaper eventually, maybe even that cheap?

[house]

check out spacemonkey.com

I haven't used it, its in beta, and have very little to offer other than it says $10/TB/month on their website.