Ok, here’s my scenario: Windows Home Server with a little over 3TB of storage. This includes many years of our home network’s PC backups, music, videos, etcetera. I’d like to get a backup off-site, and the existing APIs and apps such as CloudBerry Labs WHS Backup service are making it easy. Now, all it’s down to is vendor and the cost of the actual storage. So, I thought I’d take a lazy Saturday morning and do some research on this and get the ball rolling. What I discovered stunned me… First off, the pricing for just about everything was loaded with complexity. I learned that it wasn’t just about storage… it was about network usage, requests, sites, replication, and on and on. I really don’t see this as rocket science. I have a disk image. I want to put it in the cloud. I’m not going to be be using it but once daily for incremental backups. Sounds like a common scenario. Yes, if “things get real” and my server goes down, I will need to bring down a lot of data and utilize a fair amount of vendor infrastructure. However, this may never happen. Offsite storage is an insurance policy. The complexity of the cost structures, perhaps by design, create an environment where it’s incredibly hard to model bottom line costs and compare vendor all-up pricing. As it is a “lazy Saturday morning,” I’m not in the mood for such antics and I decide to shirk the endeavor entirely. Thus, I decided to simply fire up calc.exe and do some a simple arithmetic model based on price per GB. I shuddered at the results. Certainly something was wrong… did I misplace a decimal point? Then I discovered CloudBerry’s own calculator. Nope, I hadn’t misplaced those decimals after all. Check it out (pricing based on 3174 GB): Amazon S3 $398.00 per month $4761 per year Azure $396.75 per month $4761 per year Google $380.88 per month $4570.56 per year Conclusion: Rampant crack smoking at vendors. Seriously. Out. Of. Their. Minds. Now, to Amazon’s credit, vision, and outright common sense, they had one offering which directly addresses my scenario: Amazon Glacier $31.74 per month $380.88 per year hmmm… It’s on the table. Let’s see what it would cost to just buy some drives, an enclosure and cart them over to a friend’s house. 2 x 2TB Drives from NewEgg.com $199.99 Enclosure $39.99 $239.98 Carting data to back and forth to friend’s within walking distance pain Leave drive unplugged at friend’s $0 for electricity Possible data loss No way I can come and go every day. I think I’ll think on this a bit more…
