Transfer overage?
What should I do?
1a) Upgrade?
1b) Buy extra transfer?
1c) Get another linode and pool the transfer?
But then I run the risk of buying more than I actually need. Suppose I'm in a stingy mood
2) Don't do anything, and let Linode bill me for the exact overage at the end of the month?
I think I read somewhere that the price per GB is the same no matter which option I take. Can somebody confirm this for me?
Thanks,
11 Replies
If I were you, I'd get another 1080 (or whatever) so the transfer can be pooled and use the second host as a development/test/failover server.
Hopefully you already have, but if not, you should seriously look into any type of http compression, javascript compression, reducing quality of images, or whatever else you can do to decrease your bandwidth usage.
I believe I'm already using compression on everything I can, and a lot of things are also being cached, but there's a limit to what that can do when lighttpd status shows I'm serving 500+ requests per second (including quite a bit of dynamic content)
Awesome servers here, though – unbelievable performance as always.
1) Simply pay overage, since you're not losing money compared to other options
2) Wait to see if you're requiring more bandwidth on a sustained basis
3) If you are, then upgrade to the next higher linode that your bandwidth usage is over.
So if you're regularly using 1000GB/mth, the Linode 1440 with 200GB overage would make the most sense.
Even if you don't need the extra RAM, it does provide benefits due to caching, and it's a free upgrade if you're already using the bandwidth.
@Don Pinkster:
You can also think about moving all the static content (javascript, images, stylesheets etc) to Amazon S3 (and CloudFront).
Unless I am thinking incorrectly, using S3 would cost more than paying the overages. S3 and Cloudfront are $.18 per GB transferred out.
And yes, it's really interesting that bandwidth is cheaper here at Linode than with S3. Linode rocks! Who needs S3?
(Storage, of course, is a lot cheaper with S3, but where there's a lot of storage, there also tend to be a lot of transfer… unless you're only using it for backup purposes, that is.)
@carmp3fan:
@Don Pinkster:You can also think about moving all the static content (javascript, images, stylesheets etc) to Amazon S3 (and CloudFront).
Unless I am thinking incorrectly, using S3 would cost more than paying the overages. S3 and Cloudfront are $.18 per GB transferred out.
$0.17 per GB, but your point holds; S3's data transfer costs are higher than Linode's.
SimpleCDN's offerings are 3.4 to 7.9 cents per gig (depending on which of their three products you use), so that's cheaper.
Of course, the simplest solution is to just use Linode for bandwidth if you're not that desperate to save money.
@Guspaz:
SimpleCDN's offerings are 3.4 to 7.9 cents per gig (depending on which of their three products you use), so that's cheaper.
I've used a few CDNs, they are certainly worthwhile if you are doing tons of traffic, however for anything under a few TB it's just as easy to use Linode, either upgrade to a bigger one or get another one and split the load.
Linode alone:
Base cost: $30
Additional cost to get 2TB at Linode: $130 (2880) + $40 (+400GB)
Total cost: $200/mth
Linode + SimpleCDN (simple mirroring):
Base cost: $30
CDN cost for 1700GB: $66.30 (1700*0.039)
Total cost: $96.30/mth
So if you needed 2TB of bandwidth and fit comfortably in a 540MB Linode, you'd cut your cost in half, quite a large savings. There's some extra effort involved to set up your DNS to get it working, but it's simple edge caching so there's no management.
I'm simplifying the scenario a bit, I suspect. In reality it's not possible to so precisely control bandwidth usage that you use exactly 100% of your Linode's bandwidth and put 100% of the remained onto the CDN. But the general idea holds.