Secondary storage? Consider the cost!

Need secondary storage? Many business owners and organizations will then pretty quickly think of a cloud-based solution. Storage is relatively inexpensive, think 2 cents per gigabyte per month for archive storage. You can hardly afford to lose out on that. Our own Silent Bricks end up costing a penny more for a large installation in the first year, but the cost drops to about half to a penny per gigabyte per month after five years. Sure, it requires investment costs, but these are also all costs, including hardware, software, service and maintenance.

Retrieval costs money!

When it comes to using secondary storage in the cloud, this is quite a bit more nuanced. First, a cloud provider distinguishes different storage tiers. Moving from the archive storage layer to the so-called cold storage layer, from where you can access the data, for example, already costs 2 cents per gigabyte. Point is that you move not just the required file, but the entire BLOB container with a maximum size of 8 terabytes. Cost of moving such a maximum BLOB container: 160 euros. Next, you then want to retrieve this data back to your own location. Cost: 7.5 cents per gigabyte, so 75 euros per terabyte. With a maximum BLOB container, it costs 600 euros. And then on top of that comes the use of the required bandwidth. In short, those costs add up considerably! Yes, uploading and storing in the cloud is cheap, but the meter starts running fast when you need that data again sooner or later. Then there is often a subscription and all in all you don’t get off cheap. How a cloud can suddenly turn out to be a dark cloud.

Compare!

Compare that to the Silent Bricks. Yes, you pay for the investment. But unlike the cloud, you have complete control over your archive, and you can tap into it whenever you want. Cost of getting that back to your own location? Zero comma zero. As mentioned, all costs for software, hardware, maintenance and service are all already included in the price. Otherwise, there are no surprises and no escalating costs.