See VirtualizedHosting2018 for more current discussion.

In August of 2016, we had some discussions on IRC about the value of HCoop getting out of the hardware business and running our services on virtual machines from an infrastructure-as-a-service provider. JackHill offered to evaluate options from a cost perspective, and this page is a place to gather those considerations. There are, or course, other considerations in addition to cost, and those belong here too.

1. Cost

1.1. Current Needs

Our current needs based on the Hardware page:

• Storage: 2TiB. In AFS we are currently using 44% of 870GiB available space. 2TiB will give us enough space to accommodate our current storage needs with enough headroom to grow, local storage on machines, and working space for backups.

• Servers

  • Web: 6GiB RAM, 6 CPU

  • Login: 3GiB RAM, 4 CPU

  • Mail: 2GiB RAM, 4 CPU

  • Infra (AFS, KRB5): 4GiB, 2 CPU

  • Misc: 2GiB, 2 CPU

• Network: current usage unknown

Our current cost per month at Peer1 is $680.

1.2. auro.io

Auro is a Canadian OpenStack provider

• Servers

  • 1 x 2 GiB, 2 CPU
  • 2 x 4 GiB, 2 CPU
  • 1 x 4 GiB, 4 CPU
  • 1 x 8 GiB, 4 CPU

• Storage

  • 2TiB in addition to what is included with servers

• Network is currently free.

The above would come to $514/month

1.3. Linode

• afs+kerberos master with block device (12G, $80)
  • will also include databases (7.2G, light usage, not financially
    • sensible to split out)
• tiny secondary afs volserver/kerberos (1G, $5)
• member shell server (8G, $40)
• web server (8G, $40)
• mail server (4G, $20)

block storage is $.10/G per month, we are using ~400G including dead volumes now so could start with 600G to avoid downtime for resizing volumes (or annoyance of vicepa, vicepb...)

80 + 5 + 40 + 40 + 20 + 60 + 10 = $255

outpost is $10 per month, could downgrade to $5 per month as well

The SSD block storage in NJ is at capacity as of 2017-01-25; it's currently only available in CA on hard drives, and still in beta. (Linode forum thread) Could put the AFS server on a larger instance, e.g. Linode 48 (0.75 TB) for $180 more, or use multiple file server instances.

The backup service is roughly $.10/GB/month.

Custom kernels supported

1.4. DigitalOcean

Pricing

• 16GB afs: $80
• 1GB misc: $5
• 8GB shell: $40
• 8GB web: $40
• 4GB mail: $20
• 2GB outpost: $10
• block storage $.10/GB
• backups 20% of instance price

Total: 80 + 5 + 40 + 40 + 20 + 60 + 10 = $255

Custom kernels?

1.5. IBM Cloud/SoftLayer

• 8 CPU / 16GB ram / 100GB storage afs: $268
• 1/2/100 misc: $36
• 4/8/100 shell: $138
• 4/8/100 web: $138
• 2/4/100 outpost: $72
• Storage around $0.06/GB (750GB: $44)
• Location: Toronto

Total: $696

1.6. Google Cloud Platform

• About $17/vCPU, $2.4/GB RAM
• 6 CPU / 12GB RAM afs: $130
• 1/1 misc: $20
• 4/8 shell: $87
• 4/8 web: $87
• 2/4 outpost: $44
• Storage around $0.02 per GB ($12 for 600GB, $20 for 1TB)
• Location: Iowa
• Discounts for prepayment

Total: $382

1.7. Other VPS providers?

• Amazon EC2

• Google Cloud Platform

• IBM Cloud

• OVH

• Hetzner