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Ask HN: Cheap dedicated hosting options for side projects

122 points| webtechgal | 9 years ago | reply

Hello all,

I have a few side projects (all web apps) that would require sizable amounts of storage space (but not much of other resources) once I bring them live, so I've been searching for cheap dedicated hosting options.

If huge space requirement was not a constraint, I'd say Digital Ocean (or other low-cost cloud services like Linode, Vultr etc.) would provide great bang for the buck, but I'm talking hundreds rather than tens of gigs of storage here at which levels, DO etc. would be way beyond my reach, and out of the question.

After some research, I have found what I believe to be the cheapest dedicated box provider and before signing up there, I thought I'd run it by HN, for other opinions, suggestions etc. What do you all think?

https://www.kimsufi.com/us/en/servers.xml

117 comments

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[+] AnkhMorporkian|9 years ago|reply
Here's an option you might not have considered, but might be applicable, depending on the read/write speeds you need from those hundreds of gigabytes of data. Amazon has cloud drive, which costs something like 50 bucks a year, and has unlimited storage.

The neat thing is someone created a FUSE file system called acd_cli that allows you to use the cloud drive as if it were a normal hard drive. The speeds aren't too shabby either; I easily get 150MB/s up and down on my dedicated server, and response times are snappy. Additionally, you can create a unionfs mount so that writes are instant, and you sync new files on a regular schedule.

Of course, that might not be applicable to your use case, but I use mine for many things. I have a plex server running using that with over 13TB of videos, and it works flawlessly. It allows me to run a full plex server with unlimited storage for 20 bucks a month.

[+] dhruvkar|9 years ago|reply
I have the same issue. Running a Plex server (~6TB) at home, and thinking I need to put my media in a more accessible location. Are you using Amazon Drive as the one true source and syncing it locally to use with your Plex Server? Or are you pulling/streaming directly from ACD?
[+] jdc0589|9 years ago|reply
maybe you guys are using Plex for nothing but family vacation videos and publicly licensed content; but, no way in hell I would use 3rd party storage for my plex setup.

On the otherhand, that's a kickass storage setup though.

[+] some-guy|9 years ago|reply
I've tried this, but I've had sync issues in the past. Also have they gotten rid of their 2GB file upload limit?
[+] davidverhasselt|9 years ago|reply
- If latency isn't an issue you could store your things on Backblaze [1] which is by far the cheapest storage I've found.

- For my high-storage requirements I rent a dedicated Hetzner server with 2x3TB disks for around 30 euro/month [2]

[1] https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-storage.html

[2] https://robot.your-server.de/order/market/country/DE

[+] DanielStraight|9 years ago|reply
Since the OP indicated elsewhere that the storage need not be local on the machine, Backblaze is almost certainly the best answer.

500 GB of Backblaze B2 storage is $2.50 / month

Pair that with a $5 DigitalOcean droplet and the need is met for a grand total of $7.50 / month.

[+] Veratyr|9 years ago|reply
Depends more on your usage requirements:

- If you're basically just doing a backup and not reading data very often, Backblaze B2 is a good choice, as storage only costs 0.005$/GB (1TB is $5). However if you're reading kinda often, I'd recommend against it, as it's not the fastest to read and bandwidth is 5c/GB (it's mainly intended for backup use cases).

- If you're doing a backup and REALLY not reading data very often, Online.net's C14 is a good choice. Storage is only EUR 0.002/GB (EUR 2/TB) but reading/writing (known as "operation" on their pages) costs EUR 0.01/GB.

- If you need a decent/low latency network, I'd pay for Google Cloud Storage or something similar.

- If you're doing basically anything else, I'd recommend a server from Kimsufi (as you've found), SoYouStart, Online.net, Hetzner or OVH.

- If you're fine with something _really_ low end, another user pointed out time4vps.eu which offers the lowest cost online storage I've seen (EUR 0.002/GB) with RAM, a CPU and bandwidth attached.

[+] fbcpck|9 years ago|reply
I frequently lurk on LowEndTalk forums; if you don't mind using vps from not-so-known providers, these are the two best storage vps deals on it:

» Time4VPS (https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/85707/)

1TB Storage for €48 bienially. Double the storage for double price.

» ZXHost (https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/85803/)

1TB Storage for €45 annually. Offer has ended though; but they might do it again in the future so I'll leave it here.

—

Otherwise, go for kimsufi/ovh/soyoustart/hetzner/scaleway special offer dedicated servers. They are the cheapest you can get for non-random providers.

[+] webtechgal|9 years ago|reply
Wow!! I actually have a 20GB instance with Time4VPS, that I had found via an ad on LowEndTalk last year. I think I paid some Euro 9 or something for the WHOLE YEAR!! Other than an annoying glitch that causes the space allocation to drop down to 10GB instead of 20GB at random, it has been working quite well too.

However, I didn't know they had had the 1TB offer - I'll put in a ticket there asking them to let me know if/when it comes up again. Thanks for the info.

[+] kyriakos|9 years ago|reply
have experience with OVH and Hetzner both companies offer a stable service and their prices look too good to be real (and yet they are real)
[+] zazibar|9 years ago|reply
I highly recommend Scaleway. https://www.scaleway.com/
[+] DanielStraight|9 years ago|reply
Looks like with their lowest tier bare metal server + 450 GB additional storage the total would be 11.99 Euros per month or $13.28 USD. And there wouldn't be transfer cost between server / storage.
[+] bcheung|9 years ago|reply
I use OVH. Kimsufi is basically the same company. I think it is their low end alias or white label.

I think Kimsufi limits you to 100Mbps which might not be enough bandwidth speed if you plan on server video or other large files to a bunch of people at once. OVH gives you a 1 Gbps unlimited pipe included.

https://www.ovh.com/us/dedicated-servers/storage/

[+] gargravarr|9 years ago|reply
Kimsufi are a great low-cost provider, I ran an Atom dedi with a 1TB disk with them for 2 years at around £12 a month. Never had any problems - great bandwidth to move data around, mostly used the big disk for offsite backups. However, an important consideration - they don't adjust their pricing for existing customers or allow the hardware to be upgraded. Around the 2-year mark, they dropped the price for the same server to just £3 a month and doubled the RAM. I was told if I wanted it, I'd have to give up my current server and move everything to a brand-new one. They wouldn't drop the price, and when I asked about doubling the RAM, was told it wasn't an option. They then put the price of my dedi up not a month later. I cancelled the server and have run my own hardware since then.

Good for a specific use, but as the low price implies, there is no option to scale in future.

[+] webtechgal|9 years ago|reply
Thanks for all this info. Just out of curiosity, when they offered the same config as your £12/mo box for £3/mo and refused to reduce your billing, could you not have simply bought the cheaper one, taken a snapshot of the existing server, transferred it over to the new one and discontinued the older one?
[+] nwilkens|9 years ago|reply
At https://MNX.io we introduced an SSD cached storage VPS server -- 500GB starting at $7/month, available up to 40TB at $15/TB.
[+] joshmn|9 years ago|reply
I remember when you guys were first starting out :) I think we emailed back and forth. Nice to see you guys are here!
[+] berns|9 years ago|reply
OVH Public Cloud Object Storage. It's $ 0.01 per GB for storage and transfer. Triple replicated with datacenters in Europe and Canada. It uses Open Stack Swift which has a nice api and tools.
[+] mvip|9 years ago|reply
Assuming it's possible (i.e. you don't need a POSIX file system), your best bet might be to use an Object Store like S3. It will most likely be by far the most cost effective solution.
[+] webtechgal|9 years ago|reply
Thanks. S3 would work fine for me (from a tech perspective), but the question is, would it offer ~500 GB storage for under $10/mo?
[+] Bedon292|9 years ago|reply
Just chiming in with my experience. I have several different servers for personal projects on various OVH properties. So Kimsufi, SoYouStart, and OVH proper. They have all been great. The VPS option at OVH was nice too. 100Mbit connection, several TB of bandwidth for $5 / month. Never ran into any issues with their services, and will continue to use them for everything. Much better deal than anything else I have found.
[+] Hates_|9 years ago|reply
I use Kimsufi for a load of small side projects. AFAIK they are decommissioned OVH servers. You lose RAID as well as some other features like fail-over IPs.
[+] webtechgal|9 years ago|reply
That's great, thanks!! How about uptime and support/response issues? Of course, I am not expecting any fancy support for < $10/mo., but just to know, have you had any issues and 1st-hand experiences?
[+] jbardnz|9 years ago|reply
Seen as you already mention Vultr as an option they actually have dedicated block storage plans: https://www.vultr.com/pricing/blockstorage/

A 500GB SSD is $50/month which seems fairly reasonable. You can use it directly with a cheap VPS from them as well.

[+] webtechgal|9 years ago|reply
That's useful to know, but as mentioned in my original post, what I basically require is a dedi box and since Kimsufi is offering one with 500GB for under $10/mo., the Vultr offer won't make much commercial sense to me. Thanks anyway.
[+] Something1234|9 years ago|reply
You could go with hetzner. They recently had a special for a 64GB with 2x4TB hard drives for $54, and do a bunch of VMs on it.
[+] cweagans|9 years ago|reply
FYI, DigitalOcean is rolling out expandable block storage summer 2016 (so any day now), so that might be a good way to go. Not a lot of information, but keep an eye on https://www.digitalocean.com/features/storage/. You may be able to ask support to manually add you to the beta if you need it right now. DigitalOcean is really good about going out of their way to win your business. Full disclosure: I have no relationship to DO other than being a happy customer.

If you're looking at mostly static assets though, why not just upload them to S3 and serve them directly from there (or via a Cloudfront distribution)? EC2 boxes are fairly inexpensive as well, and there's all kind of automation tools for provisioning your AWS resources + configuring them.