Site/Server Cost Model
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- letters2
I'm putting together a proposal for a large community-driven site which will contain user uploaded video content (video akin to Youtube).
I'm supplying the client with potential costs for server/maintenance for up to 3 years out based on x number of users.
Anyone have any resources for building these costs models?
- letters20
*bump* anyone?
- moth0
If it's akin to YouTube (high user rate) you wont be hosting this on standard hosting packages. The cost will be prohibitive for the richest of clients.
- moth0
What is the value of X?
- acescence0
you might find a more appropriate forum for that type of question here http://highscalability.com/
- letters20
hey moth, only akin to youtube in format, not numbers. The estimate will have to reflect potential costs over 3 years for 15k, 30k, and 60k users. Not huge numbers, but certainly considerable if they are all posting content (unlikely, but necessary to anticipate cost).
- jpea0
there really is no way to predict cost per user for that model. if they're only posting, and it's a 1 post to 1 video view ratio, then it'd be easy. this could potentially have 1 video post to 1 million views, which would increase your bandwidth costs by a very large amount compared to 1 viewer. if you don't and won't know the value of x, y, or z whatever, you won't be able to predict anything. it's gotta be trial and error. if it goes well, costs will go up, so hopefully you're making money on it to be able to pay for it.
- letters20
Again, scale isn't as large as million + unique hits. No considerable ad dollars on this or the like. And their growth rate for users has a cap in respect to this estimate, to deal with the infinite issue. As for the viewers, there can be fixed caps on those for estimating purposes as well (as this site lives in a certain fixed context of viewers). so in this case, there are numbers and multiple year estimates is feasible.
- maximillion_0
check the link by ascense there evens a "case history" on their architecture dev
http://highscalability.com/youtu…
that should help you understand how they did it but not give you an equation to figure it out
- moth0
- moth0
- heavyt0
I would assume that you want a CDN to host the video.
You can price that out in proportion to the number of hits.
I would look into the Amazon S3 service
http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.…you could tell your client, x number of hits = y price for teh CDN
of course, you cannot predict the number of users/hits now, but they should understand that they are monetizing on hits, so the extra cost shoudl be offset by extra income.
Also, the world doesnt need "the next youtube" :D
- letters20
reading through posts at the site ascense posted – thanks for that link.
Was looking at the amazon S3 setup, seems possible. and not to worry heavyt, its not headed in that direction ;)
- moth0
S3 isn't so hot for streaming video.
Much better suited to scalable storage.