Update Proposal for Storage Node Operators

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785

for GatewayMT in some region (I do not have any of these numbers, but I believe it’s 100Gbps).

If you want to have speed - you must use a native integration where is possible. Even if your software have only S3 support, you may run your own GatewayST and integrate with it, increase parallelism and you will saturate literally any bandwidth.

And all usage from the customers are welcome, include performant users, backblaze users and govs (we have a geofencing feature and with latest information, we can comply with GDPR).

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786

I think the problem is that the service is one-size-fits-all, which of course, if it fits everybody, then it fits nobody.

Other companies have different services based on use case. Backblaze offers cheap storage for backups. It probably is not particularly fast, but good enough for backups and, importantly, cheap.
On the other hand, if I want a CDN that can do hundreds of requests per second, I’ll need to use some other service that is more expensive, but offers the speed.
And, of course, everything in between.

Storj offers one type of service that tries to do everything - be as fast as the fastest competitors, but also be as cheap as the cheapest (slower) competitors, then we get into this weird situation where we need the performance but there is not enough money.

I can compare it to VDS offers from various companies. If I want to store a lot of data and performance is not as important, I would prefer a cheaper service that uses hard drives. I understand that SSDs are better and NVMe SSDs are even better than that, but it won’t matter to me if the IO load is 2% or 0.2%, but the price would matter.
On the other hand, if I need the performance, I will pay more to get a VDS on a host with SSDs.

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787

We have been using Backblaze B2 for about two months now and we have image backups using Veeam tied to it both from their Service Provider Console and also using Synology Cloud Sync. Speed has been surprisingly good - considering we are doing image backups. Our limitation has been uploading large files using the Synology Cloud Sync app - for some of our larger storage systems we will need to use the native Backblaze app and do file level backups only. But I have no complaints on it currently.

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789

That’s a weird request you have there for a start-up company to quickly lose its reserve cash so it can go out of business. You do understand that start-ups operate in their early years at a loss, right? And without cash reserves, start ups fail. You can’t expect the company to suddenly be profitable. That’d be nice if it was, but that’s not how it typically works. I’d like to find a pile of gold in my backyard, but it’s unlikely to happen.

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790

The problem is that at least I can’t really think of any way for Storj to make different services for different prices other than selling the edge services separately.

Maybe have different classes of nodes - slow and fast. Slow nodes are slower but are paid less, great for backups and SMR drives etc. Though with 30 nodes for one segment it may not matter that much and there would be a problem proving that the node belongs in the “fast” class.
Just shuffling the prices around? Backups pay less for TBm, more for egress, CDNs pay more for TBm, less for egress or something.

Because we are selling some kind of hybrid that does not really fit the needs of anyone. On average it fits everyone’s average needs, but it does not ft individual needs.
Also, Storj is insistent to only sell to developers and not end users, at least it looks that way.

Backblaze offers a backup program that uses their service, but if I wanted to back my files up on Storj, I would either have to look for a third-party program (and have lots of fun if something does not work right) or write my own scripts that use the uplink.

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791

What software does Amazon S3 offer? I only know about the CLI.

Isn’t it good to let everyone focus on what they know best? Storj knows how to store data, someone else knows how to create a nice backup software. Backup software also needs more features than just moving files from A to B and back again.

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792

I’m not a salesperson but I think that the initial target of Storj is wrong. The Storj network has huge potential as an AWS alternative but it may still be too early to focus on that.

What I see here is a massive opportunity that is being put aside: Web3. Decentralisation is still very crypto-related in people’s minds and when trying to sell Storj as an AWS alternative for anybody outside Web3, you first have to explain why decentralisation can be beneficial to them before exposing the functionalities of the product. You don’t have to explain this to people who already are involved in Web3 because they know what it means to them.

Sure FreeNAS and other partnerships are great milestones for Storj but I’m extremely surprised about not seeing Storj being the n°1 hosting platform for NFT media and metadata as an example. Web3 people and projects need to learn more about Storj and a huge part of this has to go through Storj going ahead and making sure that these people understand that launching an NFT collection and hosting images on Google Cloud is nonsense.

Traditional and established storage solutions partnerships and integrations are great. But before this make sure to bootstrap sales by putting the product in front of already convinced people’s eyes.

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793

Amazon is big and it can get away with it. However, Amazon offers AWS and if I decide to run my VMs on there, it seems logical to store my data on Amazon as well, fewer compatibility problems, fewer pointing fingers in case something goes wrong and fewer different bills to remember to pay. As I see, if you use Amazon CloudFront CDN, then data transfered from S3 to that is free. And you probably pay less if you access the S3 stored data from a VM running in AWS.

Amazon also has service tiers - backups can use a slower, cheaper service while frequently-accessed data has to use a more expensive service.

There are a few problems with this, at least for a small company like Storj.
First, it may increase the price. Let’s say someone wants to back his files to to Storj. To do that, he needs to buy compatible backup software (there is no reason why it has to be free) and then pay Storj for the storage. This adds up to probably higher price than paying Backblaze for storage and getting the program for free.

Another problem is support. What if something goes wrong. It could be a problem with Storj or a problem with the backup program. The support of each may start pointing fingers at each other. I have seen this quite a few times, not with Storj, but in general.

A third problem is how to convince the developer to add Storj compatibility or make a program purely for Storj. Clients won’t really demand it because they don’t know what Storj is since Storj does not market to end-users. In comparison, pretty much everyone knows what Amazon is.
The developer probably does not have a reason to add it, unless he gets kickbacks (which would probably increase the price) and if he does add it, he will most likely just use the S3 gateway because it’s easier (if the program already supports S3 protocol), but it is more expensive for Storj.
Even if the developer adds it, now you still have to convince the end-user to use it instead of the other options which are probably supported by the same program. How? Leave that up to the developer to convince the user? Why would he do that? He already sold the program, it probably supports other storage services that the user uses.

For example, The “Hyper Backup” program on Synology NAS (why Synology? I have access to one) can back files up to multiple cloud services - Synology themselves, Dropbox, Azure, Google Drive, Rackspace, some others and even S3. So, in theory any Synology user can back his files up to Storj right now (using the expensive-to-Storj gateway of course, but whatever). How many would do it? How many know Storj even exists? Why should they choose Storj instead of the others? By the way, a random NAS user won’t need 5Gbps transfer speed, so he will either choose the cheapest option, the easiest option or one he knows best (“oh, it’s Google” or “well, my NAS is Synology, might as well use their cloud”).

Is there even a backup program for Windows that uses Storj? Other than the programs that only support S3 and need the gateway which removes on of the advertised features of Storj - end-to-end encryption.

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794

First of all the person has to know about storj. If someone gets to know about storj I expect it not to be a completely tech illiterate person. Because if they are, they do their backups on hdds and DVDs/BluRays, since that’s easy. I don’t think many non tech people will create S3 Accounts or any other accounts. What kind of data do most people have? Mainly Images. Google and Amazon Prime offer “free” services for photo backup.

Tech people won’t have issues to find a software that works with storj. Via gateway of course, but that may also have been storj marketings fault, since they promoted it so much.

Having another software to care for splits the developer time. Fixes, features, support has now to be done on 2 products. If the free account is not reduced then there would still be no income. If I look at my important data then it’s less than 100GB and most of that is photos. I don’t know how it is for other people.

I still believe the focus should be on B2B and developers for storj. Consumers don’t bring much money, only need more support.

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795

Seagate launched Lyve cloud with 9$/TB stored and free engress. So… where do we stand with 1.5$/TB?

796

The way I read “free egress” is “you pay for it even if you don’t use it”. It’s not a good thing.

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797

Yes, but both ways have merit.
Paying for what I use probably results in a lower bill on average. However, “what if I need a lot for one month?” then I would get a very large bill.
On the other hand, paying a fixed amount probably means I overpay on average, but it also prevents surprise bills.

798

We selling product to the developers and Enterprises, not consumers. So they want to change their infrastructure or configuration options to have all advantages, especially when they want to have a fastest speed in the world, global availability and encryption out of the box for the lower price than legacy cloud storages.

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799

yes, Duplicati with a native integration and with an S3 as well. You may also use restic of course.

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800

Arq backup will backup to Storj: Backup to Storj with Arq - Arq Backup Blog : Arq Backup Blog

801

It’s good that there are backup programs that support Storj. However, how likely is it that someone is going to find out about that program and be convinced to use Storj for the storage instead of one of the other options?

802

we need more of this, more “mainstream” backup solutions.

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805

NO! Nobody uses Duplicati - it’s odd, buggy and cursed!
Enterprise uses Veeam, Nakivo, Acronis etc. Duplicati is useless even for home users.

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806

Fully agree here. Stable version EoL, current version in beta for the foreseeable past, this is all you need to know about this abomination: there is no stable version. Why would anyone use it? And that is before even considering that it’s unstable, corrupts data, and plain garbage on all platform but windows (mono framework and all its juiciness comes with it).

Good alternatives were already mentioned, I’ll add duplicacy (but not their WebGUI — it’s utter garbage). The CLI is very good, and supports storj natively.

807

I am using Duplicati. It works just great for my usecase :wink:

1 Like