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Ask HN: Cheap dedicated hosting options for side projects

122 points by webtechgal ↗ HN
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

119 comments

[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 217 ms ] thread
angry-hacker
OpenShift by Red Hat. Upgrade to silver package, they just want your credit card but you don't have to pay anything if you run 3 small gears for an example. If you give them your CC, you get things like own domains etc. for free. For my simple side projects, it's perfect and easy to scale.

I can't remember about storage costs, but you can find out!

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andy
I know what you mean about needing a solution with lots of storage. I have Linode servers, and I'm at 90% disk space usage on one of them. They just upgraded the ram on all servers, but what I really need is more disk space. I'm nowhere near hitting the bandwidth limit, just need more space.
mvip
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.
davidverhasselt
- 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
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.

webtechgal
Wow!!! DO being a favorite of mine, I will definitely try to explore this. My concern, however, is what about the bandwidth between DO and Backblaze? How would that count/work?
snuxoll
Bandwidth into both B2 and DigitalOcean is free, bandwidth OUT of them is metered (or in the case of DO you get a bucket of bandwidth to start and then it's metered past that bucket).
jazoom
Also there appears to be no way in the dashboard of DO to see bandwidth usage. I don't know where they say it's metered after that, because they just slowed down the speed severely when my server went over, rendering it useless for its purpose without warning.
novaleaf
digital ocean charges $0.02/gb after your vm quota is used up.

fyi, amazon/google charges above $0.10/gb

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AnkhMorporkian
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
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?
AnkhMorporkian
My setup is a little convoluted. I've found that using the write mount really slows me down, so I use a unionfs mount with the writes going to the local hard drive, and the cloud drive being the primary read source. Given that it's unionfs though, anything that I haven't synced will be read from the hard drive.

So the order goes: Sonarr/CouchPotato -> Local Hard Drive -> Amazon Cloud Drive -> Plex. I stream directly off the cloud drive for any file older than an hour, as that's my upload interval.

dhruvkar
nice. so you read from ACD, because you're mainly writing to local? Or is there another reason for NOT reading from local? also, does local completely mirror ACD, or have you found a way around that?
AnkhMorporkian
It doesn't mirror it at all. The local stuff is only a temporary holding place for it to sit until it gets uploaded to ACD, at which point it is unceremoniously deleted. I have >10TB on my cloud drive, but I'm using <10GB on my hard drive.
dhruvkar
Great! Going to give this a try.
AnkhMorporkian
Give me a shout if you need any help. I know HN doesn't have private messaging, but you can reach me on IRC on Freenode at AMorpork.
dhruvkar
will do, thanks for the offer!
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yurymik
Please keep in mind that Amazon is running a variant of content-id and may mistakenly think that your files are infringing someones rights:

https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/4j7wex/any_plex_users... https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/4j5fsi/after_s...

AnkhMorporkian
As I mentioned in another comment, you can avoid all that by using encfs, which encrypts the files before they ever reach amazon.

Edit: Just read the first reddit post. I call BS on anyone using encfs consistently and receiving a legitimate email from Amazon. Unless they've broken strong encryption, there's just no way.

skrowl
Or they could just be using it as an excuse to get rid of high usage (non profitable) users. Encrypted files + you use a lot of storage and bandwidth = get kicked off.
DavideNL
Fyi, you might want to check this out (scroll to the bottom and start with the first post): https://amc.ovh/
dhruvkar
exactly what i needed.
AnkhMorporkian
I can +1 that. It's definitely not an A->B->C, but it's enough to get you 95% of the way there.
some-guy
I've tried this, but I've had sync issues in the past. Also have they gotten rid of their 2GB file upload limit?
AnkhMorporkian
Recent versions of acd_cli have largely fixed all the issues I've had in the past. I've found that essentially all issues can be solved by not writing directly to the cloud drive, but using a unionfs and uploading on a cron job.

There is no 2gb limit that I have run into. I just checked and I have several >30GB videos uploaded to my cloud drive, so I can safely say there is no issue there.

Edit: For some completeness, here's how I have everything mounted and syncing.

  acdcli mount /mnt/amazon_real --interval 30000000 -ao --uid 112 --gid 118

  unionfs-fuse -o cow /mnt/cache=RW:/mnt/amazon_real=RO /mnt/amazon -o allow_other

  0 * * * * acdcli upload --remove-source-files /mnt/cache/* /TV/ --max-connections 10; acdcli sync
And that's it. The last one is a cronjob that runs every hour, if that wasn't obvious.
amdavidson
I get that you probably tweaked this a bit for posting, but I see a disconnect that is relevant to how I want to set this up.

In the first line you mounted your whole Cloud Drive at /mnt/amazon_real. On the 3rd line you upload from /mnt/cache to /TV/.

Do you actually have a subset of the cloud drive mounted at /mnt/amazon_real? I tried to do that some time ago with acd_cli but wasn't able.

AnkhMorporkian
Whoops. The truth is I have 2 cron jobs, one running on the hour to upload TV, and another 30 after to upload movies. I meant to simplify it to just syncing the entire thing for the post, but I neglected to do that properly.

I have not looked into only mounting a section of it.

josefdlange
Former Cloud-Driver here. We launched a significant upgrade to the back-end just before I left, which technically speaking does not have the 2GB limit. That being said, I don't know if there aren't any artificial constraints. I was just responsible for the bits :D
some-guy
Thanks for the reply. I use Cloud Drive more for archival purposes than anything else and up to this point I have been RARing my files into 1.5GB chunks.
jdc0589
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.

AnkhMorporkian
I use encfs on top of all of that, which means there's no possible way for Amazon to see my files.
civilian
Do you have any thoughts on encfs vs. duplicity? http://duplicity.nongnu.org/
AnkhMorporkian
They serve different purposes, and I actually use both for different reasons. Encfs is seamless, it's encryption that doesn't impede normal operations. You can just mount it and you're off to the races.

Duplicity on the other hand is a backup solution. I use it to back up my mail server to S3. It's super handy for that, but it really couldn't be used with plex seamlessly like encfs could be.

dhruvkar
Just family home videos for me ;)
zazibar
I highly recommend Scaleway. https://www.scaleway.com/
DanielStraight
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.
Something1234
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.
walrus01
kimsufi = OVH , just FYI.
webtechgal
Thanks, yes, I actually found them via OVH only, but SO much cheaper than OVH!! The configs offered are much inferior, but okay for my requirements.
KJKingJ
They also have their "SoYouStart" brand which sits halfway between their Kimsufi offerings and their normal OVH offerings.

It's also worth checking out online.net - like OVH, they also have a decent range of decently-spec'd-but-cheap servers on offer. Unlike OVH, they only have a single brand, but within that they go all the way from lightweight, ultra-cheap Atom-based servers all the way up to multi-CPU beasts.

walrus01
The primary difference being that kimsufi has basically no support, you're wholly responsible for whatever OS you're running on the box. The only support is 'wipe and start over'. If you're confident and OK with that it's a lower cost option.
AznHisoka
To be honest, that's also the same support level as the higher plans like SoYouStart and OVH. They don't manage or administrate your servers for you. You need knowledge. The good news is: it doesn't take much to be able to manage everything on your own.
webtechgal
So very true and I doubt if ANY service with such low costs would provide any support beyond hardware/network failure. However, speaking for myself, once I have the trusty ol' CentOS 6.7 and an ssh login, Barbara is my aunt, so this works for me. :-)
icebraining
It's fine as long as one remembers the mantra: backups, backups, backups, backups.
Hates_
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
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?
kraftman
I've had a few boxes from them for a few years, they've been pretty solid. Once I had a server go offline, I got an email from them saying they'd detected an issue, another 10 minutes later saying they'd found a problem with a network connector and it was fixed. I bought an extra server for a month once and the automated system had some issues which meant I didn't get the login info, took them about a day to fix it and get back to me.
shimon_e
Use their VPS. Not oversold. Latest CPU. ECC RAM. RAID storage. Was $3/m with their 30% off promo recently. Put a single service on a single VPS. Order a few extra. Will make testing things much easier.
Hates_
Uptime has been 100% as far as I can tell and their help and response to issues have been good too. They were really good assisting me in getting drive replaced on my main OVH server as well as setting up the failover IPs between that and a backup Kimsufi one (that was before they stopped offering failover to kimsufi ones).
andybak
I use https://backupsy.com/ - essentially a cheap VPS with slow but generous storage options.

I think ovh also has an option for 'lots of space but don't worry about the other things'.

Eun
I am using https://online.net, works good so far.
jagger27
If you can put up with the latency to France.
webtechgal
Looks quite promising, and well within my price range (under $10) too. In fact, their Personal Range appears to be cheaper and config-wise superior to even Kimsufi!! I will surely check this out. @jagger27, for a WAHM from India, be it France/US/UK or whatever, they're all the same. :-)
skrowl
OVH is what we use for our side stuff. Pretty good as long as you never need support. Getting support was very slow.
chintan39
I have been using CloudAtCost for almost 2 years. Works fine for side projects or experiments.Also has one time fee option
sandis
I've been quite happy with Delimiter [1]. Cheap, but relatively beefy dedicated servers and S3-compatible object storage. You can use promo code B6NFT66YU7ZN to get 6% off in perpetuity (disclaimer: that's my affiliate code).

[1] https://www.delimiter.com

ivank
My experience with Delimiter involved sending them a hard drive, not getting it installed in the "slot hosting" VPS I paid for, not getting any support tickets answered, then eventually getting my drive back three weeks later after complaining on a forum. Said forum then banned a Delimiter sales guy, partly for posting a barcode with my home address and other PI on it.

They are literally the worst hosting business I've ever dealt with, and I've used many of the low-end providers. OVH and online.net are miles better.

sandis
When was that? Just curious, because I did see some bad reviews before deciding to go with Delimiter, but also kept hearing that things have improved in recent years. Online.net (specifically their Scaleway brand) I've been happy with as well. Their support has a quick turnaround, but answers have been unrelated to what I've been asking.
ivank
That happened in April 2016. Unrelated to my issues, they also had a very long HVAC outage earlier this year. So I'm not sure anything has improved at Delimiter/Yomura.
berns
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.
Bedon292
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.
joshbaptiste
The best bang for buck I have found so far for large storage hosting is the slot hosting option from http://www.delimiter.com, where you mail in your own hard-drive and they provide you with a local VPS that can mount it in an Atlanta data center for $100/yr. I sent a 6TB drive. I then run other cheap VPS's (usually on the east coast for lower latency) that mount the drive via sshfs.
seanwilson
Are these static websites or do the apps need to write to the storage space?
webtechgal
The sites/apps will be writing (as well as reading) ALL the time... One of them is a (proprietary) web crawler that will crawl and archive certain types of web resources. (Mainly RSS/XML feeds). Then, another one will crawl/archive URLs, take a screen shot of the URLs too and store them as gif/jpeg/png files.
collyw
What sort of static website would need that much storage?
icebraining
Something like a self-hosted pyvideo.org would probably take a few TBs.
retrack
Almost everyone here suggest Object Storage which I too think is the best option for your case. Then you can modulate computing power or even technology (VPS, cloud instance, PaaS, or containers) as you will.

Some providers like us (I am CEO at Exoscale) bill the compute by the minute and allow to resize the direct attached disk even on small 5$/mo 512mb instances.

aantix
VPSDime (http://vpsdime.com/). Their largest VPS package is

4 CPU

36GB Memory

180GB SSD Space

12TB Traffic Limit

10Gbit Connection

$42.00/mo. Lot of room for multiple sites.

forthefuture
That's both much less storage than he needs and much more expensive.