Alex has BIG cloud stroage requirements....

Hi Chris,

I have a new business client who has a very large amount (possibly as much as 100 TB) of video, photos and documents. Right now, those files are scattered among multiple computers and external hard drives.

Their ultimate goal is to eventually consolidate all those files into one location that will be accessible online by 5 different employees.

My initial instinct was to have them purchase an “unlimited” business plan on Dropbox or Box and upload all the files there. But on closer examination, I’ve noticed that these so-called “unlimited” plans really aren’t. Apparently Dropbox caps you at 2 TB and then you have to contact them and beg them to increase your storage capacity. I’m guessing that Box has similar restrictions.

My other thought is to create a VPS on Digital Ocean, Amazon or GCP. But paying monthly for storing up to 100 TB of files would almost certainly become cost-prohibitive. Doing a quick calculation on Digital Ocean’s Spaces option, I see I could store 10 TB for $200/month. Which would be fine, if 10 TB of storage is all this business needed. But if they really do have 100 TB, then that monthly cost goes up to $2,000/month.

I know that AWS offers Glacier storage for only $0.004/GB, so that might be a good option. But I was hoping to avoid AWS b/c their user interface has 5000 features that seems so confusing.

How would you approach this situation to come up with a more affordable solution?

Thanks in advance!

Alejandro