Linode Forum

tommy · Joined: 14 Oct 2011 Posts: 8

I understand that it's not fair to compare server disk prices with consumer ones, and that you charge more than the standard prices to pay for maintenance, staff, RAID, etc.

However, it seems like the storage prices are far higher than they should be.

10 GB of storage costs me $120/year.

To put this into perspective, I can store 70 GB of data in Amazon S3 high-redundancy data for that price.

I love every aspect of Linode and consider myself a very happy customer, but I need some more disk space and think these prices are way too high.

In addition, it's only possible to add 10 GB to your server. Is it possible to increase this to at least 50 or 100 GB as the max possible to be added?

Hopefully these prices and limits have just been overlooked and somebody at Linode will reconsider them.

Thanks!

hawk7000 · Joined: 10 Dec 2010 Posts: 95

tommy wrote: I understand that it's not fair to compare server disk prices with consumer ones, and that you charge more than the standard prices to pay for maintenance, staff, RAID, etc.

However, it seems like the storage prices are far higher than they should be.

10 GB of storage costs me $120/year.

To put this into perspective, I can store 70 GB of data in Amazon S3 high-redundancy data for that price.

I love every aspect of Linode and consider myself a very happy customer, but I need some more disk space and think these prices are way too high.

In addition, it's only possible to add 10 GB to your server. Is it possible to increase this to at least 50 or 100 GB as the max possible to be added?

Hopefully these prices and limits have just been overlooked and somebody at Linode will reconsider them.

Thanks!

Generally you get a storage + ram + less CPU and IO contention + bandwidth upgrade for the same price if you switch plans instead of buying extra storage for the lower plan.

I suppose the pricing for extra storage comes down to it actually being locally attached storage in the Linode host machines, hence a limited amount of total storage available to the guests running on that host.

Also, there is nothing stopping you from using Amazon S3 if that is what you want.

zunzun

hawk7000 wrote: Also, there is nothing stopping you from using Amazon S3 if that is what you want.

Also there is nothing stopping him from using Egyptian hieroglyphs written on the backsides of frogs if that is what he wants.

James

Piki · Joined: 16 Jun 2011 Posts: 276 Location: Cyberspace

zunzun wrote: Also there is nothing stopping him from using Egyptian hieroglyphs written on the backsides of frogs if that is what he wants.

Until the frogs jump away :-)

If you're looking for just basic mail server + web/mysql server, Linode is more than sufficient:
Code: kris@li283-45:~$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/xvda 39G 1.3G 36G 4% /
That's a Linode 1024. Of course, I don't know what you're looking to use it for, but if it uses more than the allotted 40GB (or close to it), then a higher-up plan will be the route to go.

Guspaz · Joined: 26 May 2009 Posts: 1150 Location: Montreal, QC

Linode's host machines have room for four drives, and they use four 15K RPM SAS drives in RAID 10. So they're really limited in how much storage they can afford to give a linode. It may be that the storage itself isn't expensive, but because of the scarcity, they charge a lot so that people won't consume all the excess.

That said, it's high time that Linode offered us some sort of affordable way to get more storage.

hoopycat · Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2011 12:22 pm Post subject:

As part of my continuing series on the state of hard drive technology:

Currently, 600 GB seems to be the largest hard drive you can get from Newegg, with Linode's presumed interface and rotational speed specifications. At four bays per server with a RAID 10 configuration, this allows for 1200 GB per server. At 20 GB per Linode Standard Unit and excluding dom0 storage and scratch space for snapshots, etc, this permits 60 Linode Standard Units per server.

Azathoth · Joined: 07 Dec 2009 Posts: 263

Guspaz wrote:
That said, it's high time that Linode offered us some sort of affordable way to get more storage.

Hear, hear!

Piki · Joined: 16 Jun 2011 Posts: 276 Location: Cyberspace

They have a way, they just need to make it affordable :-)

hybinet · Joined: 02 May 2008 Posts: 1058

There was a thread here a few weeks ago where Linode asked us what kind of features we wanted. Cheap network-attached disk was one of the most commonly requested features. So I'm sure Linode is working on some sort of disk solution...

tommy · Joined: 14 Oct 2011 Posts: 8

hybinet wrote: There was a thread here a few weeks ago where Linode asked us what kind of features we wanted. Cheap network-attached disk was one of the most commonly requested features. So I'm sure Linode is working on some sort of disk solution...

Network-attached disks would work great. They could set up special servers with lots of disk space to avoid the problems mentioned in this thread of their current hardware limitations.

bji · Joined: 27 Aug 2003 Posts: 273

tommy wrote: hybinet wrote: There was a thread here a few weeks ago where Linode asked us what kind of features we wanted. Cheap network-attached disk was one of the most commonly requested features. So I'm sure Linode is working on some sort of disk solution...

Network-attached disks would work great. They could set up special servers with lots of disk space to avoid the problems mentioned in this thread of their current hardware limitations.

Once again I am bumping up against the limits of disk space on my Linode. Seems to be a yearly problem. I'm at 96% after a vacation to France and the resulting 1,000 photos added to my gallery site. I have eliminated every nonessential file from my server.

Please Linode, if you're working on network attached storage, make it happen soon!

hybinet · Joined: 02 May 2008 Posts: 1058

bji wrote: Once again I am bumping up against the limits of disk space on my Linode. Seems to be a yearly problem.
I was wondering when you'd show up in this thread. 8)

Suggestion: Whenever you go on vacation, include the cost of upgrading your Linode (and keeping it upgraded until your next vacation) in your holiday budget, right next to the airfare and hotel charges.

bji · Joined: 27 Aug 2003 Posts: 273

hybinet wrote: bji wrote: Once again I am bumping up against the limits of disk space on my Linode. Seems to be a yearly problem.
I was wondering when you'd show up in this thread. 8)

Suggestion: Whenever you go on vacation, include the cost of upgrading your Linode (and keeping it upgraded until your next vacation) in your holiday budget, right next to the airfare and hotel charges.

I actually took the time to calculate the cost of storing pictures on my Linode a little while ago. At an average of 2.5 MB per picture (which includes the large version and all intermediate versions and associated content that gallery keeps for each image), and at Linode's rates of $10 per month per incremental 10 GB of disk space, each photo costs me 0.2 cents per month, or 2.4 cents per year.

This is $24 per year for the 1,000 photos taken on the France trip. Not too expensive when you look at it in that light. Of course, I have to pay that every year in perpetuity (until Linode's disk prices come down, which they slowly but surely will), and I have to pay it for the other 10,000 photos on my site as well, so the total is really closer to $250 per year. That's a fair chunk of change for hosting digital photos ...

hybinet · Joined: 02 May 2008 Posts: 1058

bji wrote: At an average of 2.5 MB per picture
bji wrote: the other 10,000 photos on my site
bji wrote: so the total is really closer to $250 per year
You've been complaining about 2.5MB x 10,000 = 25GB of storage all this time? That's only slightly more than the capacity of a Linode 512, which indeed costs $240 per year if you pay monthly. You can't go much lower than that, even if you had zero pictures.

Stingy stingy bji :twisted:

But I suppose that's after deleting lots of pictures and shrinking the originals to fit your Linode, so you still have a point.

notsoluckycharm · Joined: 27 Oct 2011 Posts: 2 Location: United States

hybinet wrote: bji wrote: At an average of 2.5 MB per picture
bji wrote: the other 10,000 photos on my site
bji wrote: so the total is really closer to $250 per year
You've been complaining about 2.5MB x 10,000 = 25GB of storage all this time? That's only slightly more than the capacity of a Linode 512, which indeed costs $240 per year if you pay monthly. You can't go much lower than that, even if you had zero pictures.

Stingy stingy bji :twisted:

But I suppose that's after deleting lots of pictures and shrinking the originals to fit your Linode, so you still have a point.

Well, my setup with linode is a little more extreme. locally mounted amazon S3 / CDN and 3 node Zend Cluster 1024's

This provides me storage at the Amazon rate ( which is rather affodable ) and is as easy as doing mv file /mnt/s3/bucket ... then the display URLs are hooked into the CDN urls. :D

Though +1 for locally attached storage - then I'd just need to rsync the servers.

Why is disk space so expensive?