Hi,

Glad I found this place. I was searching for hosting, highbandwidth hosting, terabyte hosting, and google gives me jillions of hits and I don't even know where to start.

Okay here it is: I've been putting together an idea for a site that will require humongous bandwidth, i'm talking terabyte per day type bandwidth. It's gonna be a video hosting type site, kind of like break, killsometime, youtube, etc.

It'll be a php blog cms with some adaptations to look more like a site than a blog, and will tap several mysql db's to serve content. It will also have user comments and user accounts. It's got to be a managed server, cuz I can't operate it myself. It needs cpanel though, I know how to use that. Lastly, it's got to provide several TB's of bandwidth a month. Preferably through my own dedicated line, so there's no bandwidth cap. Disk size is not a big deal, just the standard 20GB or so is enough.

What kind of options do I have, and what kind of costs?

By the way, this post is NOT a request for hosting offers. I need to understand my needs before I go shopping.

Thanks in advance!

Joe,

First off it's going to need to be backed by unmetered servers: Otherwise you're not going to be able to afford the bill (and no 'terabyte host' is going to back it for 7.95 a month).

If you plan on using at least a terabyte a day: It's also going to need to be in the 100 mbit range (unmetered 100mbit, pricey stuff!). 10mbit unmetered will get you about 3 terabytes of transfer per month. 100 will do 30 terabytes and so forth.

As for whom to get it through: I'd recommend talking to someone who will manage the server on your behalf and you simply just pay them to handle everything rather than trying to handle it on your own (server management, server provisioning, provider choices, etc.).

Good luck with the hunt!

Remember, all sites will start small, no matter how great the idea is.

That being said, to push a TB a day you are looking at an incredible cost to yourself. A 100mbps pipe being used 24/7 at fully capacity can theoretically push around 32TB a month, some will say 36tb but I wouldn't bet on it. You would be looking for something like 120mbps dedicated, with the ability to burst to 150 or even more depending on the popularity of the site.

If you truly, honestly think the site will explode, you might as well start off with a 20mbps min. and let it grow from there. Assuming you only want to do this on one server for starters get a nice dual processor box (Opteron is the leading proc IMO). Get a 10K raptor to help with the buffering as well.

Unmanaged; however, you can get 3rd party
http://ev1servers.net/
http://layeredtech.com
http://voxrox.com

As mentioned already, you'll be maxing out a 100mbps switch, expect to pay in excess of $800+ per month for one of these with any 1/2 decent provider

If this site will be of great importance I would suggest utilizing some sort of cluster based solution with load balancing. You can find these types of configs available at rackspace and ev1. Ofcourse if your on a budget and don't care much about reliability there is a wonderful company that sells unmetered servers, but I refuse to mention the name here as it will spark a war!

the cost itself come let your pocket dry up ... unless you get good $$ from your website

Joe,

First off it's going to need to be backed by unmetered servers: Otherwise you're not going to be able to afford the bill (and no 'terabyte host' is going to back it for 7.95 a month).



Good luck with the hunt!

HAY DREAMHOST (as long as you don't get killed for CPU usage (php cms)) :crying:


There's always the dedicated servers in Israel that give you 1gbit unmetered for $400/mo

Thanks for the inputs everyone. Sound like my solution is a loadbalanced cluster of dual processor machines with fast hard drives, serving content through an unmetered line.

So I have a few more questions:

What are the common bandwidth above 100mbps, and generally what do those cost? Oh, and what does a 100mbps generally cost?


And on a side note, chew on this:
youtube claims they serve up about 25,000,000 videos daily. Let's say the average vid is 1MB. That's 25TB a day, so that must mean an unmetered line, right? What kind of line do you think they have? And how much does something like that cost?

Thanks!

Last time I checked you could get a 100 mbps line from ev1 for ~$2200.

I would highly suggest you start out very small though and work your way up.

are you planning on charging for entering to the videos?
if so, will you use passwords?
if so, which software would you use?
and which payment methods?

And on a side note, chew on this:
youtube claims they serve up about 25,000,000 videos daily. Let's say the average vid is 1MB. That's 25TB a day, so that must mean an unmetered line, right? What kind of line do you think they have? And how much does something like that cost?
I would think that YouTube will have several racks of kit and several lines and a large bandwidth commit :)

Cost...at most total revenue minus 20% I'd hope :D

youtube claims they serve up about 25,000,000 videos daily. Let's say the average vid is 1MB. That's 25TB a day, so that must mean an unmetered line, right? What kind of line do you think they have? And how much does something like that cost?


Multiple gig-e lines is what they would have at least. Most likely multiple locations with different providers for reliability.

Hmm just did a tracert on them, nothing but cogent it appears. I guess with a huge commit cogent will lower their already obscene prices, but its still damned expensive when you figure in the techs and hardware needed to keep an operation like that going.