Well, Linode implemented my managed load balancing idea (ha - I'm sure they were working on it long before I brought it up though), so I thought I'd ask for something new.

I'd _love_ to have some sort of managed storage available inside the data center, ala Amazon S3 or Rackspace cloud files. Paid for on a per-GB/mo basis, or something somewhat comparable to that. Resilient against hardware failures, etc.

I'd like to be able to do two things with it:

1. Snapshot disk images to it. Basically a single API call, or a single click in the Manager, and I can store an image on the storage system. And of course be able to similarly create a node based on an image on the storage system.

2. Be able to access it for application-level storage using some sort of API; even just HTTP get/post/put/delete would be fine.

Perhaps an additional bonus would be able to mount the storage as a file system; however, if this in any way hurt the reliability of the system, this would be the first thing I'd drop in a heartbeat. Items 1 and 2 are the keys.

External access (e.g. outside linode networks) would be another bonus, but again I think lower priority than items 1 and 2.

I realize I could build some facsimile of this myself using a set of nodes; however, the cost per GB/mo on a node runs about $1.25 right now, which makes it pretty hard to swallow; making it redundant on two nodes would take that up to $2.50/GB/mo, which is, uh, yikes. Now I realize this is apples to oranges - that's why I'm asking...I would like an orange, and all I have is a basket of apples.

FYI, for those needing cloud storage...I found this article comparing throughput and latencies from Linode's data centers to various cloud storage providers:

http://blog.cloudharmony.com/2010/02/cl ... at-is.html

It's from a year ago, but still interesting. For example, here's the data from the Dallas facility: