Anyone offer a data upload service in SA?

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scotch196

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Hi,

I'd like to know if anyone provides a data upload service in SA? I live in the sticks with slow wireless and a bandwith cap, so not feasible to load many gigs of data to a cloud service.

I'd like to send a hard-drive to a company that can upload all the initial data for me to the cloud service of my choice. After that, I could upload files incremently myself as needed. It's that initial +-1TB of data that I cannot upload myself that I need done for me.

Any advice or suggestions much appreciated.

Thanks,

Scotch
 
It depends on what cloud service you intend to use(as said). If it's your own cloud(pun) at some hosting provider, you can send the disk straight them.

They can even give you a terminal where you can plug the drive into and copy the data over the LAN, if if it's a dedicated box you can just courier it and they'll plug it into the machine.
 
Thanks for the responses. Not too clued up on cloud storage solutions but was looking at something like Dropbox or Bitcasa. I'm a photographer (mainly wildlife) and just want a safe place to store all my photos instead of relying solely on external hard-drives in case of fire or theft. I shoot in Raw, which makes files quite big, but guess with some editing could reduce total size to around 100-200 gigs. After the initial upload, could add pics (+-5gigs) every month or so as needed. Hope this makes sense.
Cheers,
Scotch
 
Nee bru...for 1TB you need a more coherent plan as to what you want. Go research a bit more.

NB Dropbox is a sync solution *not* a backup solution. I limited cases it can save your ass for backup but its a bad strategy.

Since this is your bread and butter I'd suggest research some actual high end backup services. Even then...try to keep up the ext hard drive thing. With mission critical backups you never trust anything...not even a high end backup service. Assume that at least 2 fck-ups will occur simultaneously on different fronts.

Also cloud service does not equal backup service...though this would very much depend on the exact implementation. Cloud services take keeping your data safe seriously...but its just one aspect of their business. For backup services keeping your data safe *is* their business.

That being said, Iteology's offer seems generous.
 
OK, thanks, realise I need to do more research. At the end of the day I just want:
i) a secure way of backing up files so I'm not totally reliant on hard-drives
ii) a way of trasferring the data initially without trying to do it over a slow internet connection.
 
Hi Scotch. We can assist with our cloud backup solution. Link in my signature. If you are interested we are more than happy to courier a hard drive for the initial backup. From there it will be incremental. PM me if you need more info.
 
Problem being the cost of storage in the "CLOUD". Everyone in Cloud knows that storage and IO are the two infant legs every VPS provider cripples themselves on.

So you want to store 1TB in the cloud? Great, how fast do you want to access this data? How redundant must it be?

A few things come to mind, like ZFS, maybe HAST if not more. Owncloud or some or other opensource Dropbox replica. Its not complicated, its just a question of price and just how much you want to spend/save.

I know a few people I could persuade to start something like this... But who has the time to O.o
 
spiderz said:
Write everything to a few dvd's. Pop them in a safe.
Click to expand...

Blue ray discs in a fireproof safe. FTW
USB BD writers under R1k these days, discs still a little expensive though
 
Maybe cobian and a NAS device in the roof? Will cover against theft but won't offer any disaster recovery in the event of fire.

All comes down to budget though, you can scale this up quite heavily if you have bucks to spend. If not, local will be the cheapest
 
Hi and thanks for all the suggestions/advice. Obviously more complex than an old fogey photographer thought, so clearly more research is required. Thanks also Oceanhost for your offer, have bookmarked your site for future reference. Yep, all comes down to budget I guess and if it's going to cost around R300 pm or more, probably more viable to buy additional external drives and store them in different places.
 
If you can convince an ISP with a similar service or even a service relating to what you want I am sure you can get it done. As for buying more drives, no its not more viable. You will always need (N + 1) and if you cant separate location with included symmetry of data your still looking at a loss. If this is your bread and butter then its wise to actually call/email ISP or even challenge 1 or 2. They all claim to be the best in the market and this is not exactly some unknown tech...

Just saying, why dont we as consumers refer all these businesses to a source of innovation. Look at Google, Amazon and the like. They innovate to make profit--no-one cared about Google-Drive or Dropbox until they actually saw the importance of random access from anywhere.

All I am saying is, we are just paying for the same old **** at a higher rate locally... but we get practically 0 innovation. A pretty website here and there to autodeploy puppet/chef recipes into a vps "cloud"--with the level of support you would get from a adsl tech who installed virtualbox on his windows xp desktop.

Sorry for my rant... I'm Just Disappoint...

In the end here is (A) solution:

Step by Step:
1: Contact an ISP.
2 Do they run a dropbox or the like system. Owncloud is the current #1 for opensource.
3: Is this service running on a JBOD server cluster
4: What is the server eco system like:
4.a: The File System. If they say ZFS then its a +1!
4.b: The transfer rates to and from the servers to clients. If its a case of how fast you can get there then ask if you can install FIBRE or a wireless link. Overkill but still worth asking.
4.c: The redundancy configuration. This includes not just RAID or RAIDZ but also entire server redundancy i.e.: TCPRAID
4.d: D.R Time. Should disaster occur at their DC, what is the maximum expected disaster recovery time.
5. Over all cost on a p/GIG base.
6. Cost for bandwidth charges
7. Alternate arrangements for sending external drives to DC location for upload. (This is only in your case since one can assume you would do large shoots from time to time resulting in 100's of gigs of data, if not then excuse the assumption)

None of this is rocket science... It just takes a little brainstorming and someone willing to listen and think about the problem.

PS: If i missed a few things... excuse me i'm groggy before my morning smoke O.o
 
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