
Ask HN: Where can I host a 1TB DB relatively cheaply? - anothernameiluv
I have a 1TB DB that will grow over time and have been looking for a host that is relatively cheap. Everything I see is hosting with SSD so getting 1TB and larger is somewhat expensive. Are there any (cheap) HDD hosts out there?
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BrianT
[Disclosure - I work for Delimiter]

@nreece suggested our StorageVPS. Delimiter's storage VPS are HDD based but
NVMe accelerated. We run ZFS with the ZIL/Cache on the NVMe. The storage
performance is great, but CPU isn't overly generous. They are optimised to get
data to/from disk.

I would recommend you look at our Cloud Compute product. Its based on
Cloudstack, highly distributed Ceph backend - HDD with NVMe fronting the
disks. It uses Cloudstack's advanced networking so you have a router/firewall
by default as well as internal networking should you want to have more than
just the DB locally.

[https://cc.delimiter.com/cart/cloud-resource-
pool/](https://cc.delimiter.com/cart/cloud-resource-pool/)

A 1TB Ceph disk with 1GB RAM, 1 CPU will cost you $20.40/month

I am not sure what DB you are running but even if boost that up to 4GB RAM, 2
CPUs, 1TB Disk that is $34.62/month

Dedicated cores on the CPUs, 10Gbps uplink. We have a variety of customers
running MongoDB clusters, MySQL/MariaDB, Couchbase and so on. Internal
networks lets you keep the cluster network private. Just punch through the
firewall for the ports you need publicly accessible or even limit the source
address to stop non-authorised users.

If you want to give it a test, then just mail me on sales@delimiter.com and
I'll get you a 30 day trial.

\--

Another option could be a cheap dedicated - we have some Dual E5420, 16GB RAM,
1TB Disk or 2 x 500GB for $200/year

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r3muxd
Aren't you the people that null-routed a Eve online guild?

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badestrand
As others have noted, most "traditional" dedicated server hosters should have
good offers.

Hetzner in Germany for example has 8 TB HDD with 32 GB RAM and a i7-6700 Quad-
Core for ~55 USD per month.

edit: US hosters seem to be quite a bit more expensive. Does anyone know why
there is such a difference?

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adventured
Simply put, they can command it. US GDP per capita is ~1/3 higher than in
Germany, as is the median income. It's why companies like Softlayer or
Rackspace, with relatively high prices, built such substantial businesses in
the dedicated space years ago: US businesses could afford it.

The underlying cost structure is also more challenging in the US for most
dedicated hosts. Building a data center in the US, as with most
infrastructure, costs more than it does in Germany.

When you account for the higher cost of infrastructure and the higher
productivity (economic output), a $80 Hetzner server becomes a $120 or $140
server in the US.

It's the same reason housing in Australia is so expensive (their incomes have
skyrocketed over the last 15 years), or why the cost of living is so high in
Switzerland (very high incomes). If you cut US GDP per capita from ~$57k-$60k
down to $28,000 (just as an example) - dedicated hosts in the US would not be
able to command the same high prices, the market would not bear that.

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dx034
That doesn't explain why OVH can offer servers in Canada for about the same
price (via soyoustart.com or OVH). Electricity in Quebec is cheap but parts of
the US are similar (OR, WA). Perhaps many US companies don't trust European
providers so that they have to win on price?

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mosselman
Why doesn't it? Canada isn't the US and Quebec isn't New York. What doe the
electricity cost of some regions of the US have to do with the costs where
data centers actually are like New York? The GDP per capita in Canada is
$46.000[1] and in the US it is $57.400[2].

[1]: [https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-
factbook/...](https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-
factbook/geos/ca.html) [2]: [https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-
world-factbook/...](https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-
factbook/geos/us.html)

~~~
dx034
> What doe the electricity cost of some regions of the US have to do with the
> costs where data centers actually are like New York?

I'd expect electricity to be a major cost item for data centers. GDP per
capita is not a good proxy for the cost of running a data center. It is only
loosely related to labour costs and not at all to cost of infrastructure
projects and regulation.

So I still don't completely understand why US data centers are more expensive,
esp at locations like Kansas or Oregon where energy is cheaper than in
most/all of Europe.

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ktta
[https://www.time4vps.eu/storage-servers/](https://www.time4vps.eu/storage-
servers/)

They aren't the most reputed but aren't sketchy either. You're not going to
get cheaper than this. If you are sure that you'll use to for a while, then go
for the annual/biennial plans. They really bring down the monthly price.

~~~
balladeer
Also, I recently saw a post on LET that after October 4 they are bumping their
VPS prices up.

Been a happy customer for last 3+ years. Just my second online backup of
encrypted personal data (first is CrashPlan). But at this price they don’t
backup their severs and even though they have been around for really a long
time I’ll hesitate to do something on production there. Good with support
tickets and all.

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nreece
Delimiter has inexpensive storage VPS plans:
[https://www.delimiter.com/storage-vps/](https://www.delimiter.com/storage-
vps/)

~~~
BrianT
Thanks for the recommendation.

[Disclosure - I work for Delimiter]

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EKSolutions
I use a service called Kimsufi quite some. They offer cheap Dedicated Servers
with up to 2TB of storage.

Very reliable and trustable too since they're owned by OVH.

~~~
dx034
Their soyoustart.com server range is also worth checking out. More powerful
servers than Kimsufi. Price/value is extremely good as long as you don't mind
managing your own server. A dedicated machine with 16GB ram and 1-2TB HDD will
cost you $25-30/month.

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mad182
[https://www.hetzner.com/](https://www.hetzner.com/)

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wetha
AWS. t2.Micro instance = $15 monthly. EBS Cold HDD 1 TB = $26 monthly. With
the free tier, the T2 instance is free the first year. Plus, all the cloudy
goodness of EBS Snapshots for backup and easy scalability.

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mproud
Do you need to be fast at all? Do you need to run persistent apps?

Because if not, traditional hosting often has near limitless storage for less
than $100 a year (think Dreamhost, Bluehost, 1&1, etc.)

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hndamien
Sia might be a good option - [https://blog.sia.tech/](https://blog.sia.tech/)

$0.48 per TB per month

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siquick
Digital Ocean is $105USD for 1TB, not sure how this compares to others?

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anothernameiluv
Yeah, that's just a bit too much $ for what I need. I've been looking at
Linode, Scaleway, Vultr, Digital Ocean but they are a bit too pricey. This
isn't a mission critical DB and doesn't have to be SSD speeds.

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bfrog
Linode did just start offering extensible block storage at $0.10/GB/Mo so in
your case not exactly cheap, $120/mo or so minimum basically for anything
sensible. AWS EBS is cheaper, $0.045/GB/Mo for their HDD option. Though again,
still atleast ~$70/mo for something sensible (decent ec2 instance and ebs
storage). Google is only slightly cheaper, $0.040/GB/Mo.

Realistically the cheapest option is probably renting a physical machine thats
a bit older as others have suggested. If its not a true database that needs
block storage, and just flat files, S3 is always hard to beat.

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thrownaway954
Out of curiosity... What DB platform and OS are you using?

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corobo
In addition to those questions lets stop beating up bushes - whats your budget
@op

All you're getting right now are vague suggestions and hugely varying price
points. If we knew the budget we could more easily recommend something

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jaequery
unless you are just storing logs or your app dont really care about
performance, id always advise to run your databases on SSD

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dx034
Why? For simple queries with medium load, SSD is not necessary at all. Esp if
you don't do much writing and reading at the same time. HDD is still 5-10x
cheaper.

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newsmania
Hosthatch has a 1 TB hdd vps plan for $20. I’ve used them before and they were
ok. They had a network outage but fixed it.

