Ask HN: Cost of servers & bandwidth
11 comments
Committed bandwidth can be had in many datacenters these days for around $50/Mbs ($50 for every 1Mbps of committed bandwidth). Or you can do 95th percentile burstable bandwidth as well (or combine the two ($100/mo for 2Mbs plus ~$100 for every 1Mbs over 2Mbps, billed 95th percentile)).
About $400/mo for a half cabinet and some power. You're in the neighborhood of probably $500-$900/mo.
Why colocation instead of some shared or pseudo-dedicated server some place? Because (IMO and IME) you're better off with any site that is going to do streaming and potential sustained throughput in colo facility with fixed costs. Places like Rackspace just love when you go 10x over their pitiful limits and your $200 monthly plan is suddenly $4000. Kind of hard to budget for.
Of course, I'm also biased, having an interest in a colo facility :)
About $400/mo for a half cabinet and some power. You're in the neighborhood of probably $500-$900/mo.
Why colocation instead of some shared or pseudo-dedicated server some place? Because (IMO and IME) you're better off with any site that is going to do streaming and potential sustained throughput in colo facility with fixed costs. Places like Rackspace just love when you go 10x over their pitiful limits and your $200 monthly plan is suddenly $4000. Kind of hard to budget for.
Of course, I'm also biased, having an interest in a colo facility :)
> About $400/mo for a half cabinet and some power. You're in the neighborhood of probably $500-$900/mo.
And that doesn't even factor in buying a server if it's a colo. Which is exactly why he should be renting a dedicated and buying bandwidth at $10-$20/Mbit. It doesn't make sense to setup your own rack unless you're going to have more than a few machines. It's more expensive and a lot more work.
And that doesn't even factor in buying a server if it's a colo. Which is exactly why he should be renting a dedicated and buying bandwidth at $10-$20/Mbit. It doesn't make sense to setup your own rack unless you're going to have more than a few machines. It's more expensive and a lot more work.
If you're talking about providing a high capacity and quality experience then there's no alternative to colo.
I think the /Mbps prices quoted are a bit on the high side (you can get cheap transit at 5GBP/Mbps if you deal in reasonable commits). Apart from dropping your own line in there's no cheaper way I know of to achieve the quality.
Use of a CDN would allow less capital outlay on the standard http hosting (could use dedis, vm, cloud) and somewhat instant scalability. Once you know your traffic patterns your implementation options sometimes get made for you.
I think the /Mbps prices quoted are a bit on the high side (you can get cheap transit at 5GBP/Mbps if you deal in reasonable commits). Apart from dropping your own line in there's no cheaper way I know of to achieve the quality.
Use of a CDN would allow less capital outlay on the standard http hosting (could use dedis, vm, cloud) and somewhat instant scalability. Once you know your traffic patterns your implementation options sometimes get made for you.
Yes, the prices were a bit high. They're very regional (and depend on what carriers are at a given site, etc), so I was trying to give a decent average, erring towards worst case (my own prices in MA are a good bit lower, but I'm not trying to troll for customers on HN).
Good point on the CDN, "streaming" can sometimes be non-CDN compatible (although "CDN" is a wide ranging term).
Were it me, I'd start with an $800 1U box in a decent colo somewhere. Add another one on the opposite coast when the first started to get above 50% utilization and then scale from there.
Good point on the CDN, "streaming" can sometimes be non-CDN compatible (although "CDN" is a wide ranging term).
Were it me, I'd start with an $800 1U box in a decent colo somewhere. Add another one on the opposite coast when the first started to get above 50% utilization and then scale from there.
Going colo can be worth it when you need serious hardware but for 800$ / month you can pick up:
Four of these: Xeon 3210 - SATA 250 GB IDE/SATA HDD 2 GB 2000 GB 5 IPs $199.00
Or one of these ~Dual Xeon 2.8, 8 x 300 GB 10K RPM SCSI/SAS HDD 2 x 73 GB 10K RPM SCSI/SAS HDD 8 GB RAM 3000 GB Bandwidth 5 IPs $799.00
Which can take a lot of traffic. IMO Colo is great when you want to use lots of heavy duty HW and little bandwidth but for front end web servers you need a lot of traffic before it's reasonable.
Four of these: Xeon 3210 - SATA 250 GB IDE/SATA HDD 2 GB 2000 GB 5 IPs $199.00
Or one of these ~Dual Xeon 2.8, 8 x 300 GB 10K RPM SCSI/SAS HDD 2 x 73 GB 10K RPM SCSI/SAS HDD 8 GB RAM 3000 GB Bandwidth 5 IPs $799.00
Which can take a lot of traffic. IMO Colo is great when you want to use lots of heavy duty HW and little bandwidth but for front end web servers you need a lot of traffic before it's reasonable.
" It's more expensive and a lot more work."
Until your site goes viral, quashes your "dedicated" server (or the providers upstream bandwidth) and your customers are met with some fail-whale variant.
Use a rented server to get off the ground and get the prototype out there, but don't try to build a backbone on that model. Especially when you're going to be doing streaming, your uptime IS your product, renting a server is like trying to start a livery service by going to Avis every morning and renting a car each day. It will work great, until it doesn't, and you're left scrambling.
Until your site goes viral, quashes your "dedicated" server (or the providers upstream bandwidth) and your customers are met with some fail-whale variant.
Use a rented server to get off the ground and get the prototype out there, but don't try to build a backbone on that model. Especially when you're going to be doing streaming, your uptime IS your product, renting a server is like trying to start a livery service by going to Avis every morning and renting a car each day. It will work great, until it doesn't, and you're left scrambling.
> Until your site goes viral, quashes your "dedicated" server (or the providers upstream bandwidth) and your customers are met with some fail-whale variant.
Most sites don't "go viral". A reasonably powerful dedicated server can handle serving an incredible number of requests for static content. Any good host (like ServerBeach) is going to have far more bandwidth to spare than what you're running to your own rack. They can also give you additional servers in an hour or two in an emergency. Far more quickly than you can buy and install your own.
Using dedicated servers these days is not like it was in the past. Servers are far more powerful and bandwidth is far cheaper. One beefy server can do what a dozen older generation machines could do. That 40 server rack in 2001 is a couple dedicated servers in 2008. For me, at least.
Most sites don't "go viral". A reasonably powerful dedicated server can handle serving an incredible number of requests for static content. Any good host (like ServerBeach) is going to have far more bandwidth to spare than what you're running to your own rack. They can also give you additional servers in an hour or two in an emergency. Far more quickly than you can buy and install your own.
Using dedicated servers these days is not like it was in the past. Servers are far more powerful and bandwidth is far cheaper. One beefy server can do what a dozen older generation machines could do. That 40 server rack in 2001 is a couple dedicated servers in 2008. For me, at least.
all valid points. The poster might also want to consider using a CDN if it's single request streaming files, otherwise colo as you said.
whatever you choose make sure it can scale fast, but at the same time (depending on your presentation of the media), there's always the option of piggybacking on someone else (like youtube) who's made the infrastructure investment.
whatever you choose make sure it can scale fast, but at the same time (depending on your presentation of the media), there's always the option of piggybacking on someone else (like youtube) who's made the infrastructure investment.
If you mean serving audio files 100k times (once per "user") then it's not expensive unless the files are especially large. If you're serving over HTTP then use high performance web server (like nginx or lighttpd) and a dedicated server.
I highly recommend ServerBeach myself -- especially if you're going to use any significant amount of bandwidth. For $75/mo you can have a dedicated server and 1200 GB/mo transfer.
http://www.serverbeach.com/catalog/cust_ref_landing_new.php?... ($100 off w/my referral code ($250 for me))
http://www.serverbeach.com (no referral code :D)
I highly recommend ServerBeach myself -- especially if you're going to use any significant amount of bandwidth. For $75/mo you can have a dedicated server and 1200 GB/mo transfer.
http://www.serverbeach.com/catalog/cust_ref_landing_new.php?... ($100 off w/my referral code ($250 for me))
http://www.serverbeach.com (no referral code :D)
I also recommend checking serverbeach. My box for userscripts.org runs on a $180/mo box (the extra cost is for 3GB of RAM).
I'm currently doing 50k visitors a day and dark traffic of 10x that - averaging 1.2Mbps without a problem.
You can even get 10Mbps or 100Mbps unmetered for $100/mo and $1000/mo roughly
I'm currently doing 50k visitors a day and dark traffic of 10x that - averaging 1.2Mbps without a problem.
You can even get 10Mbps or 100Mbps unmetered for $100/mo and $1000/mo roughly
S3 based on 100k members uploading on average 5x5MB audio files each, and a growth (new uploads) of around 10%/month:
Storage: 1500GB
Transfer in: 150GB
Transfer out: 30000GB
PUT requests: 50000
GET requests: 10000000
———————————————
Total cost: $4,560.10
Can this kind of bandwith be had cheaper? And by the way how did you get that 30000GB figure? It's roughly the full capacity of 100 Mbps connection.
Shouldn't that be POST? PUT would be for updating the file that was originally POSTed.
No, POST is typically for submitting data to some other "resource" for processing, while PUT is for storing data to a specific URL.
HTTP/1.1 RFC: "The fundamental difference between the POST and PUT requests is reflected in the different meaning of the Request-URI. The URI in a POST request identifies the resource that will handle the enclosed entity. That resource might be a data-accepting process, a gateway to some other protocol, or a separate entity that accepts annotations. In contrast, the URI in a PUT request identifies the entity enclosed with the request -- the user agent knows what URI is intended and the server MUST NOT attempt to apply the request to some other resource."
And from S3 documentation: "Objects are stored using the HTTP PUT method."
S3 and similar file storage services map particularly well to GET, PUT, and DELETE.
HTTP/1.1 RFC: "The fundamental difference between the POST and PUT requests is reflected in the different meaning of the Request-URI. The URI in a POST request identifies the resource that will handle the enclosed entity. That resource might be a data-accepting process, a gateway to some other protocol, or a separate entity that accepts annotations. In contrast, the URI in a PUT request identifies the entity enclosed with the request -- the user agent knows what URI is intended and the server MUST NOT attempt to apply the request to some other resource."
And from S3 documentation: "Objects are stored using the HTTP PUT method."
S3 and similar file storage services map particularly well to GET, PUT, and DELETE.
I go through http://serverpronto.com for my hosted machine. It's a real machine (not virtual or shared) and I've got real root access to it. It comes with Fedora 3 or 4 and I upgraded it to Fedora 6 remotely, but I'm a little intimidated to upgrade beyond that without having physical access to the machine. $30/mo, 200GB bandwidth @ 100Mbit, 30GB HD, 256M ram for starters. There are other options. I use S3 for storage of large data items. All-in-all not too bad for a good hosting setup. I host about 10 semi-active sites on that one machine. My S3 monthly charges are $1 for my personal backups of important data and $30 for website data.
I know that there are plans out there for unmetered monthly data that's capped at a certain speed for a fixed low $$/mo (30-ish), but they tend to be virtual hosts. You could get a real host (for the site and good performance) with capped bandwidth and a second host with unmetered bandwidth for the storage and delivery of your streaming media. Best of both worlds kinda, but again S3 charges so little, that it may be better to just go through Amazon for the media.
I know that there are plans out there for unmetered monthly data that's capped at a certain speed for a fixed low $$/mo (30-ish), but they tend to be virtual hosts. You could get a real host (for the site and good performance) with capped bandwidth and a second host with unmetered bandwidth for the storage and delivery of your streaming media. Best of both worlds kinda, but again S3 charges so little, that it may be better to just go through Amazon for the media.
But they offer only 200 GB of bandwith with that plus overages are $0.89 per GB. Yes you've got root acess but they charge $29 for reboot (yuck!) and $75 for half an hour of custom services.
I think that one would be better off using VPS like Linode or Slicehost: you can reboot, repartition and reinstall your virtual machine to your liking and the expansion should be easy and straightforward.
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Go to webhostingtalk.com and look on the colo hosting offers section. That will give you your lower-end pricing for colo space and bandwidth pricing.
Then add some kind of servers, I am partial to the Sun servers that have LOM (lights out management) or the HP ones that have iLO (same idea). This lets you connect to a service processor on the system, and lets you power-on/off/reboot it, control the BIOS, and even install the OS on it, remotely. You can get them used on eBay for $1000 to $2000 each.
Then add some kind of servers, I am partial to the Sun servers that have LOM (lights out management) or the HP ones that have iLO (same idea). This lets you connect to a service processor on the system, and lets you power-on/off/reboot it, control the BIOS, and even install the OS on it, remotely. You can get them used on eBay for $1000 to $2000 each.
http://www.simplecdn.com/savings (On-Demand Flash Streaming part)
Don't know them yet, but there are some good reviews. Perhaps it can be a starting point even if it doesn't deliver completely. I am planning to use them in the near future on top of AWS and Google App Engine, but not for streaming.
Don't know them yet, but there are some good reviews. Perhaps it can be a starting point even if it doesn't deliver completely. I am planning to use them in the near future on top of AWS and Google App Engine, but not for streaming.
http://www.gandi.net/hosting/proposal/price/
it's pretty much an elastic cloud. i didn't try it myself yet, though. unmetered bandwidth in 5mbps increments, plenty of other resources, and very attractive pricing. i think it's as good as it gets for home-made small cdns and whatnot.
it's pretty much an elastic cloud. i didn't try it myself yet, though. unmetered bandwidth in 5mbps increments, plenty of other resources, and very attractive pricing. i think it's as good as it gets for home-made small cdns and whatnot.
Thanks ....
What about using Amazon S3 to store/stream users uploaded files, but the site being hosted elsewhere - a dedicated box at home for instance?
They click to play a file and it starts streaming it from S3. Is this doable? Looks to be cheap this way?
What about using Amazon S3 to store/stream users uploaded files, but the site being hosted elsewhere - a dedicated box at home for instance?
They click to play a file and it starts streaming it from S3. Is this doable? Looks to be cheap this way?
Sure. http://mediawombat.com does that very thing. The website is stored on a hosted machine somewhere in Florida and the actual media is stored on Amazon's S3 and loaded via the browser on demand.
Cool ... that looks to be the cheapest solution.
Possibly use a shared deluxe to host site on 1.2TB bandwidth a month, then all the storage and streaming of audio files from S3.
Possibly use a shared deluxe to host site on 1.2TB bandwidth a month, then all the storage and streaming of audio files from S3.
> Possibly use a shared deluxe to host site on 1.2TB bandwidth a month, then all the storage and streaming of audio files from S3.
If you mean some kind of shared hosting, I would strongly advice against it. If you are looking at 50k - 100k users a month, you would need good amount of RAM and CPU to do stuff like re-encoding mp3 files (you will have to do this as flash does not support many kinds of mp3 files)
There is other stuff too .. atleast go for a VPS. We are hosted on one and the experience has been brilliant so far.
If you mean some kind of shared hosting, I would strongly advice against it. If you are looking at 50k - 100k users a month, you would need good amount of RAM and CPU to do stuff like re-encoding mp3 files (you will have to do this as flash does not support many kinds of mp3 files)
There is other stuff too .. atleast go for a VPS. We are hosted on one and the experience has been brilliant so far.
youtube scaled on serverbeach. 'nuff said frankly.
I however would do AWS without question. (already on AWS, was on serverbeach - loved them though)
I however would do AWS without question. (already on AWS, was on serverbeach - loved them though)
Actually, youtube was on serverbeach until they had to scale. They immediately moved to colo and CDN.
I wonder what Justin.TV uses?
I think in addition to their own servers, they use AWS http://www.slideshare.net/tracylaxdal/justintv-aws-the-start...
That's a little out of date. We have a few racks and several 10,000mbps uplinks.
does user=visit for small user sets? We get about 15k visits/mo but only 300 users.
Does anyone know of a link resource that details this type of information or able to detail their experiences? Does not need to be specific regarding stated monthly users.