Website for Unlimited FTP hosting.

[HecFam]

Hi guys,

Sorry if this is slightly the wrong section,

I have a client who wants to be able to upload unlimited amounts of documents to an FTP server in which their clients can download from there.

I just have no idea of the best one to go with.

Can anyone suggest a place for unlimited disk space that doesn't cap the number of users downloading?

If anyone has used any before and recommends them, can you give me a heads up.

Thanks.

 

[Deleted member 77746]

Amazon S3 / Cloud based solutions ?

Buy storage with Skydrive / Google Drive e.t.c....

Won't be FTP as such but can use clients to connect if required...

 

[HecFam]

Yeah, Thanks for the suggestion,

But from what i gather, they want a webspace where clients can go and just download it straight from there.

Im not sure if they need protection or accounts on it, so any FTP suggestion ill have a look into.

Thanks for the reply.

 

[Deleted member 77746]

What's the difference? They can still upload/download/share/whatever...

Amazon S3 as suggested will do it...

Build a web front end... to connect like owncloud or something like that....takes about 1 hour if you know a little bit about it.

 

[HecFam]

I've just had a look at it, it does seem like it will do the job.

Its just im only involved to scout what they need, I will have no involvement in setting it up.

I think they just wanted a nice and easy, client log on, download kind of thing.

Ill suggest it to them and see what they think.

Cheers for your help.

 

[Deleted member 77746]

I've just had a look at it, it does seem like it will do the job.

Its just im only involved to scout what they need, I will have no involvement in setting it up.

I think they just wanted a nice and easy, client log on, download kind of thing.

Ill suggest it to them and see what they think.

Cheers for your help.

oh I thought you would be the one setting it up. No problem.

There are more solutions out there though not just Amazon S3...

 

[daz]

I have a client who wants to be able to upload unlimited amounts of documents

...

Can anyone suggest a place for unlimited disk space that doesn't cap the number of users downloading?

Unless you have an unlimited budget, any provider offering "unlimited" space is going to come with severe restrictions in what you can use that space for, such that it's not really, unlimited.

Just something to bear in mind - work out your realistic disk space requirements and purchase a package that meets that.

 

[HecFam]

To be fair, At the moment, im up to any suggestion.

They say they want unlimited, ill show them an unlimited one, but if there is a better one that isn't unlimited ill show them the difference and they decide.

So im open to any options at the moment.

 

[sharkkk]

Unlimited storage costs £unlimited

 

[Deleted member 77746]

They can pay per GB if they wish... they won't require unlimited... They require what space they use which won't be unlimited...

 

[uniQ]

Amazon AWS/S3, Rackspace Business, VDS/Dedicated etc.

 

[asim18]

Unlimited storage costs £unlimited

Exactly.

No such thing as unlimited. Even the biggest bandwidth users on the internet have limits.

"Unlimited" is just a marketing buzzword for small time hosting companies. Try running YouTube on one of these providers

You will need to find out a limit. Clients, especially in IT, typically have no idea what they want. They just said "unlimited" because they cant be arsed to find out what their limit is. It's up to the consultant to figure everything out.

 

[RoyMi6]

I think (form a "interpreting requirements" point of view) what the client, and HecFam, are going to be looking at is hosting solutions that allow expandable storage. I.e. finite storage that can be added to in the future.

It's happened to me in the past that a hosting provider was unable to allocate more storage without moving files to another package. Do NOT ask me why this was the case but needless to say it was a reason to drop them. This may be the experience of someone in the company and have just used the wrong word to express their concern - it also might not be at all!

HecFam, if you've not done it already raise it when making esquires and point out to the client that any quoted, fixed, storage amount is either expandable or not. Places charge varying amount to change your storage requirements and paying upfront for 100TB of possible storage may be the most economical method if you ever plan on reaching that amount but realistically doing an real internal assessment of current storage requirements may mean that only 100GB of storage is actually required.

Typically anything that touts themselves as "cloud based" is going to give you easiest time in changing storage requirements.

I know this is the coding section guys but we don't have to be pedantic ALL the time. Interpreting and, ultimately, understanding requirements rather than stating back what's not possible is what we should be doing.

 

[SkyTerran]

https://mega.co.nz/#pro - 4TB Storage for 20 or so quid per month. With backup, encryption, etc.

 

[aln]

It's happened to me in the past that a hosting provider was unable to allocate more storage without moving files to another package. Do NOT ask me why this was the case but needless to say it was a reason to drop them. This may be the experience of someone in the company and have just used the wrong word to express their concern - it also might not be at all!

Yeah that was probably a silly concern on your part. Packages generally refer to your allowances and associated costs, not hard limits of a file system. It probably would have required them to update a database row either manually or by using some drop down box and for you to pay more.

Now if you want something that'll dynamically grow per usage, you're probably looking at some sort of pay-per-usage solution as opposed to the pay per allowance that is historically associated with web hosting providers.

Still, as other have suggested, theres no such thing as unlimited storage but there are a lot of vendors who'll be able to cater to your needs.

 

[HecFam]

Cheers for the responses guys. I was just asked to take a look into this for a colleague.

It's his job to rendezvous with the client, so i'll pass it onto him.

Thanks.

 

[RoyMi6]

Yeah that was probably a silly concern on your part.

Not in my opinion. The change to a different package was going to result in a full server move, so different IP's and estimate of 2 days to migrate everything fully.

When I had given my requirement in the first place that we would likely be looking at growing the storage requirements over the next 12 months I didn't think it was acceptable - especially if the same thing happened again come the next time we needed to expand.

Moved to a different provider that's allowed me to grab a slider that changed the storage limit and billed accordingly meant over 3 years we must have changed the storage requirements about 10 times. This kept our overheads at a minimum as we were never paying for more than used.

If you consider ease of use, time and money a silly concern then fair enough...

 

[Morningwalker]

i agree with mrbell1984. go for that buddy

 

[aln]

Not in my opinion. The change to a different package was going to result in a full server move, so different IP's and estimate of 2 days to migrate everything fully.

When I had given my requirement in the first place that we would likely be looking at growing the storage requirements over the next 12 months I didn't think it was acceptable - especially if the same thing happened again come the next time we needed to expand.

Moved to a different provider that's allowed me to grab a slider that changed the storage limit and billed accordingly meant over 3 years we must have changed the storage requirements about 10 times. This kept our overheads at a minimum as we were never paying for more than used.

If you consider ease of use, time and money a silly concern then fair enough...

You didn't actually mention that before, but it's still not a major issue unless they plan on actually charging you for the work or are telling you to do it yourself. Other than the new IP*, such changes should be done transparently to yourself.

However this new info does point to them having a fairly traditional approach to hosting services which would likely limit their ability to allow you to grow easily in the future. So whilst your gut feeling was probably right, I'd still say your reasoning seems a tad suspect.

Still the point of that dialogue is to help those who don't know what those terms reflect in reality so they can make informed decisions in the future. Theres simply no need to get defensive over your time and money bro.

* You should be using hostnames instead of IP addresses and C Names before A records. Even though your current hosting company is doing a good job right now, theres no telling which clowns will be running them in the future. Relying on DNS as opposed to IP addresses helps you migrate things away transparently to your users. It's pretty good practice in my opinion.

 

[mobiapps]

group the documents size space minimum and separate folders