

Ask HN: Most affordable method to host a lot of files - dutchbrit

I'm working on a file sharing site (more info here for those interested: http://blog.serve2.com)<p>I'm looking for an affordable, stable and scalable solution, where I can host a large amount of files with fast upload speeds for people downloading the files. What solution would you suggest?
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sheraz
People are touting S3, but you pay twice -- storage and transfer. Using the
most inexpensive options with S3, a 1 gigabyte file (with reduced redundancy)
with 1 download per month would run you $0.21.

Even without the one download this would still cost you $0.093 just to keep
the file!

Let's ramp up and assume you have 1TB of storage and 250GB / month of
transfer. How much is that?

STORAGE: 1000 GB x $0.093 = $93.00 TRANSFER: 1000 GB x $0.120 = $120.00

TOTAL: $213.00

I should note the above does not include any servers which will actually run
the websites.

Lets compare this to hosting your own (ie - dedicated):

I have a 1.5 TB RAID-I server with 1.8 TB transfer per month on a 100MB port
on a month-to-month contract.

STORAGE: 1.5TB RAID-I TRANSFER: 1.8TB

Total : $123.00 / month

It is a 8-core xeon with 4GB RAM -- I run a LAPP stack with 6 Cores dedicated
to ffmpeg and image conversions. Waayyyy faster than cloud.

This is more of a hosting and infrastructure question. I recommend bringing
this question to the community at webhostingtalk.com.

Yes, you will have to grow into these numbers, but that can happen pretty
quickly.

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sumukh1
Just curious, who are you hosting it with?

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sheraz
currently at 800hosting.com. I got a slightly better deal because of an error
in their order system (now fixed). It's only been a month but not problems so
far.

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vitovito
If you're building a file sharing site, aren't the logistics of _sharing
files_ exactly what your core competency is supposed to be? Why would you
outsource that?

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dangrossman
Your first blog post is an admission of copyright infringement... and it's a
video of a guy that's probably going to be imprisoned for doing the same
thing. Are you sure you want to get into this business?

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gspyrou
You may aslo take a look at Windows Azure Storage
<https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/calculator/>

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ammmir
for simplicity and reducing time to market, outsource it to S3 or an S3 API-
compatible storage provider. you can always buy disk boxes down the road and
slap an S3-like API in front of them.

in addition, you could use WebRTC to build a BitTorrent-like P2P distribution
system that's native to the web, where your servers act as "seeds." this is to
reduce your bandwidth costs for >1 clients downloading/streaming the same
file.

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ayers
Out of interest you mentioned in that blog post that you received a DMCA
notice for the video. Who was that notice from?

~~~
dutchbrit
TVWorks Limited

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GoofyGewber
I like your idea, and the website! S3 is probably your best way to go.

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mthomas
Why not use S3 with cloudfront.

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paulhauggis
Isn't S3 really expensive?

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18pfsmt
I suppose it depends on one's definition of expensive, but it is simple enough
to see their pricing: <http://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/>

