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  1. #1

    Planning to offer backup VPSs, need some advice

    Hi !
    First of all, please be patient, this things are still new for me.
    Well, i am thinking about start a VPS hosting company. So i am doing a lot of research first to not disappoint me and/or my customers.

    But, i need to do a question about the market, i plan to start offering cheap backup VPS.
    Something about this:
    Plan 1: $7,49 for 120GB of disk and 192MB of RAM
    Plan 2: $10,9 for 200GB of disk and the same 192MB of RAM

    To lower cost i'll get a large node, with 7 HDDs in RAID 6. But I'm afraid to take many months to fill a large node, and in the meantime paying for an idle machine.

    FINALLY my question
    Do you think there is customers looking for this kind of stuff ?? Or i am wasting my time and money trying to start with this, and could be better/easy to start with other kind of services? Like SSD VPSes, cheap VPSs ........

    Sorry for the long post and thank you for the help !

  2. #2
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    What's a backup vps?
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  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by Collabora View Post
    What's a backup vps?
    The idea is a VPS with plenty of disk space and not much memory, aiming only to store backups.

    I already use a service like this to backup my personal e-mail server, it is very useful.

  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by alexisrgl View Post
    To lower cost i'll get a large node, with 7 HDDs in RAID 6. But I'm afraid to take many months to fill a large node, and in the meantime paying for an idle machine.
    This sort of issue is inherent in the process of starting a business. What does your business plan say?

    Do you think there is customers looking for this kind of stuff ?? Or i am wasting my time and money trying to start with this, and could be better/easy to start with other kind of services? Like SSD VPSes, cheap VPSs ........
    I've seen a few others offering something similar but I don't know how viable it is. My feeling is that you'll be squeezed between the regular low end VPSs that are already offering 20 - 40GB at around $5 and a low end dedi like the Kimsufi 2G (2TB for about $20). And then for low and / or variable usage there's AWS and similar storage. It seems like a tough market to me.
    Chris

    "Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them." - Laurence J. Peter

  5. #5
    120GB - 200 GB is not very much.
    Another important thing to consider for backup machines is the monthly transfer and the port speed (100Mbps/1Gbps)

    BB
    Live your Life, Everyday

  6. #6
    Indeed, Consider different traffic terms and much larger backup capacity since in today's market those numbers are too low.

  7. #7
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    BuyVM offer backup VPS and they seem to be extremely popular, but it does seem like a tough market with services such as dropbox/live drive and Google drive about.
    IT & Hosting Solutions Rotherham - Virtual6 Ltd
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  8. #8
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    My honest opinion would be to to start small, like you said, buying a big machine and using only 10% of it, you'll be throwing alot of money down the drain, So start small and expand as you require. And yes a backup VPS would be very wise idea. But as above, you have massive competition from the likes of google.
    Regards
    Josh Kility, Former CEO AllHostOne

  9. #9
    Ok, but a VPS is more flexible than services such as dropbox/live drive and Google drive, is not ?

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by alexisrgl View Post
    Ok, but a VPS is more flexible than services such as dropbox/live drive and Google drive, is not ?
    Ofcourse, you have control over, unlike Google drive where you just upload/download files
    Regards
    Josh Kility, Former CEO AllHostOne

  11. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by alexisrgl View Post
    Ok, but a VPS is more flexible than services such as dropbox/live drive and Google drive, is not ?
    Then why market them as backup services, market them as VPS
    IT & Hosting Solutions Rotherham - Virtual6 Ltd
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  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by VMPort View Post
    Then why market them as backup services, market them as VPS
    hehe, well, i market this as a "backup VPS"
    A VPS with less than 256MB of RAM and 150GB of disk is not "normal".

    I think this "backup VPS" idea is getting too confusing. Right ?

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by VMPort View Post
    BuyVM offer backup VPS and they seem to be extremely popular, but it does seem like a tough market with services such as dropbox/live drive and Google drive about.
    BuyVM ? I found only common VPS on his site

  14. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by alexisrgl View Post
    BuyVM ? I found only common VPS on his site
    Click the tab that says storage
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  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by mitgib View Post
    Click the tab that says storage
    oh, my fault. Found it now, thank you.

  16. #16
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    Quote Originally Posted by mitgib View Post
    Click the tab that says storage
    That'd do it.
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  17. #17
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    If you want to venture into backup hosting, you should be prepared to offer lots of disk storage for a low rate, because BuyVM and Hostigation are offering very good pricing for backup VPS's. I wouldn't pay $10 for 200GB backup space when I can get 500GB for $15 from BuyVM and about $9/m from Hostigation (prepaid quarterly)

  18. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by foobic View Post
    What does your business plan say?
    A business plan is not a magic document. The revenue side of it is largely a guess/hope/best estimate anyway.
    raindog308
    LowEndTalk administrator, LowEndBox editor

  19. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by FTN-Kevin View Post
    If you want to venture into backup hosting, you should be prepared to offer lots of disk storage for a low rate, because BuyVM and Hostigation are offering very good pricing for backup VPS's. I wouldn't pay $10 for 200GB backup space when I can get 500GB for $15 from BuyVM and about $9/m from Hostigation (prepaid quarterly)
    BuyVM has no stock and based on comments by them, it's not a very profitable offering. They have not released storage stock to my knowledge since last October (before that, actually) and given that they've had several releases of OvZ and KVM, I don't think it's an offering they're really enthused about. Out of all their nodes, only one is storage.

    More serious competitors are Hostigation and SecureDragon. Hostigation is also out of stock at the moment.

    There's definitely a desire in the marketplace for this service - if for no other reason than S3 pricing is expensive and you have to put your own rsync front end (or pay a third-party service). Whether or not that desire persists at a price which is profitable to the provider is another matter.

    People can get $20/month 1TB space from Kimsufi...but it's a single hard drive. Many of the consumer offerings are either not very Linux script-friendly (e.g., Google Drive - though LiveDrive does offer FTP and rsync on their pro packages I believe) or not very high-volume friendly (S3, Azure, etc. where you pay 10-12 cents/month). One advantage S3, Azure, etc. have is that inbound bandwidth is free.

    I have backup VPSes at both Hostigation and SecureDragon. The only viable backup method is via rsync, given the bandwidth they give you, which works fine for me.
    raindog308
    LowEndTalk administrator, LowEndBox editor

  20. #20
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    Quote Originally Posted by alexisrgl View Post
    FINALLY my question
    Do you think there is customers looking for this kind of stuff ?? Or i am wasting my time and money trying to start with this, and could be better/easy to start with other kind of services? Like SSD VPSes, cheap VPSs ........
    If these are your questions, you are not ready to enter any market, you need to do more research, this is not field of dreams, build it and they will come, you really owe it to your customers to have a clue what you are doing, but you don't even know what you want to do, just have some idea, which is great, ideas are where everything starts, but doesn't end there. Get some experience, go work for another provider, or volunteer at one if you can't find one to work at, see how dealing with customer needs is, you may hate it, I've been doing this for 17 years now, it's not for everyone.
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  21. #21
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    Quote Originally Posted by raindog308 View Post
    BuyVM has no stock and based on comments by them, it's not a very profitable offering. They have not released storage stock to my knowledge since last October (before that, actually) and given that they've had several releases of OvZ and KVM, I don't think it's an offering they're really enthused about. Out of all their nodes, only one is storage.
    LIES

    We had 7TB worth of stock this past round, just we sold it to people on IRC first since they're awesome

    Storage doesn't make a real killing. They sell really fast because we give a ton of resources for a minimal price. We're only making $300/m per AMP of power though and that's pretty meh.

    With our push to Atlanta we'll likely put another storage over there but it'll again be sold to current customers first before anything is put live.

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  22. #22

    Lightbulb

    Quote Originally Posted by mitgib View Post
    If these are your questions, you are not ready to enter any market, you need to do more research, this is not field of dreams, build it and they will come, you really owe it to your customers to have a clue what you are doing, but you don't even know what you want to do, just have some idea, which is great, ideas are where everything starts, but doesn't end there. Get some experience, go work for another provider, or volunteer at one if you can't find one to work at, see how dealing with customer needs is, you may hate it, I've been doing this for 17 years now, it's not for everyone.
    Thanks for the advice
    Yes, i know i'm not ready to enter in any market right now
    I am still researching, and this post is part of it.

    For now, my only definition is to work with VPS hosting, but i have a lot of choices to do yet, i am trying to found the right path to follow.
    So i probably will not go to start a business so soon, i still have a lot of work to do, but i am determined

  23. #23
    Quote Originally Posted by DeltaAnime View Post
    LIES

    We had 7TB worth of stock this past round, just we sold it to people on IRC first since they're awesome
    Sorry...I am less than awesome :-)
    raindog308
    LowEndTalk administrator, LowEndBox editor

  24. #24
    Quote Originally Posted by raindog308 View Post
    BuyVM has no stock and based on comments by them, it's not a very profitable offering. They have not released storage stock to my knowledge since last October (before that, actually) and given that they've had several releases of OvZ and KVM, I don't think it's an offering they're really enthused about. Out of all their nodes, only one is storage.

    More serious competitors are Hostigation and SecureDragon. Hostigation is also out of stock at the moment.

    There's definitely a desire in the marketplace for this service - if for no other reason than S3 pricing is expensive and you have to put your own rsync front end (or pay a third-party service). Whether or not that desire persists at a price which is profitable to the provider is another matter.

    People can get $20/month 1TB space from Kimsufi...but it's a single hard drive. Many of the consumer offerings are either not very Linux script-friendly (e.g., Google Drive - though LiveDrive does offer FTP and rsync on their pro packages I believe) or not very high-volume friendly (S3, Azure, etc. where you pay 10-12 cents/month). One advantage S3, Azure, etc. have is that inbound bandwidth is free.

    I have backup VPSes at both Hostigation and SecureDragon. The only viable backup method is via rsync, given the bandwidth they give you, which works fine for me.
    Thanks for the reply
    Yes, i prefer a VPS in a RAID 6 node rather than a single disk dedicated.
    I have a 25GB backup VPS at SecureDragon, to backup my personal mail server, works fine.

    About the bandwidth, what about plans with more incoming than outgoing bw?? For example, 1TB in / 300GB out.
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  25. #25
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    I have backup vps at web-wide-hosting.co.nz, hostigation.com, and buyvm.net. All of which are great ideas, at great prices. I'm surprised there is not more of a thriving market for self-managed low ram/cpu, high disk, VPS. Although, i can easily see those VPS markets getting saturated by pirates. ArrrggghhhH!!!

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