You may want to use “external”/online storage to host personal videos or important data that you want to have backups of, or perhaps you have videos you don’t want to host on YouTube/Vimeo for different reasons, that’s where Storage Hosting comes in mind.
Storage Hosting will also refer to “Block Storage” and Cache Storage, so you will be able to host a lot of content that you will be able to serve your clients quickly without overloading your main server.
The Concept of Block Storage
A web hosting provider featuring block storage allows you to save data in volumes, called blocks. Usually, a storage attached network (SAN) presents these raw volumes of data storage to servers.
Each volume block has its own location ID assigned by the operating system. Therefore, each block can act or function as an individual hard drive or storage repository.
The manufacturers’ hardware capabilities and the storage architect’s infrastructure design determine the size of each block and the allocation of files. Selecting the proper block size for each client can essentially affect the client’s performance. Usually, files are split into evenly sized blocks of data on a SAN.
As the end-user, you will see the block storage as a mapped drive or a local hard drive on the server’s operating system.
Web hosting providers usually include block storage as a popular service in their managed plans. Essentially, block storage on a cloud allows users to extend volume capacity and do it for an affordable price. In turn, users get to have on-demand storage allocated to any cloud instance within minutes.
Top 4 Storage Hosting Providers Compared
Sure, you need to check the standard web hosting features, such as uptime, reliability, speed, privacy features, and support. Still, it would be best to review some block storage-specific features.
Fast forward, let’s see what the top four market performers offer in terms of block storage qualities so that you can understand the overall idea.
| Linode | Vultr | Interserver | KnownHost | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Features |
|
|
|
|
| Pricing |
Now that you get the overall picture, let’s get into more details.
This web hosting provider allows its users to attach additional high-speed volumes, thus easily add storage to their Linodes. As explained, block storage is independent. In turn, customers can scale this storage capacity up or down, as needed.
At any point, Linode users can attach or detach storage blocks without the need to reboot. Without the reboots, you can work faster and move drives between systems in a matter of seconds.
Better yet, when one decides to detach or delete the data from a particular Linode, the provider doesn’t delete the data. Instead, the customer can attach it to another Linode.
All block storage volumes are configured with 3x data replication, making it highly available to end-users. Also, Linode Block Storage is powered by large-capacity HDDs, delivering superior speeds, further improving the client experience.
Still, what I like the most about Linode is its full-featured API. It provides users an opportunity to control and manage the Linode infrastructure programmatically. To be more specific, you can create, attach and mount an attached block storage volumes easily.
Linode presents the block storage volumes as regular drives. Therefore, as a user, you can netboot from it or use it as your root directory. You can also change the order in which the Linode presents the drives within it, attach and detach events seemingly instantaneous.
Last but certainly not least, you can easily duplicate your data by cloning your block storage volumes.
Vultr is yet another quality block storage provider. It allows you, as the end-user, to create expandable storage volumes and mount them directly from your compute instances.
Through the API, one can scale the block storage volume up or down quickly. Better yet, users pay only for the hours they use the platform. There’s also no need to modify the cloud instance local disk in the process.
Vultr features a redundant architecture that ultimately protects their clients’ data and delivers high IO performance.
Each Vultr Block Storage is stored and replicated across a highly available cluster, ensuring data durability and 99.99999% availability. As high-speed NVMe enterprise SSDs back the VBS, you can expect high-performance data throughput to your instance.
What I like the most about Vultr is its extensive Knowledge Base. It provides information about the Block Storage generally, along with specific guides regarding the API.
Interserver provides Storage Hosting. Still, it’s a bit different than Linode and Vultr.
As a customer, you cannot purchase storage exclusively. Instead, it comes in package deals along with Transfers, Domains, Sub Domains, Unlimited Users, File Manager, MYSQL, PHP, CGI, and Control Panel.
Intersever’s offers range between 100GB and 10TB to store images, videos, backups, and more to archive data privately or publicly. Better yet, as the end-user, you can upgrade or downgrade anytime.
Customers also benefit from an easy-to-manage control panel powered by DirectAdmin. It provides for easily adding domain names, subdomains, FTP accounts, and MySQL databases. Their web server, in turn, is powered by the NGINX, accounting for fast content delivery.
On each storage hosting plan, the user can install OwnCloud, which essentially allows them to assess the stored data from anywhere, anytime.
In addition to all this, Interserver provides 24/7 support and a 99.9% uptime guarantee.
KnownHost also provides reliable remote storage as a solution for all of their customers’ storage needs. The best part about it is the extreme flexibility. Their beginning package offers 500GB, and one can choose to add blocks of 100GB for a fixed price per GB.
So, while you cannot get 600GB or 700GB, but mostly rounded numbers, with other providers, KnownHost is here to assist you in full. If you need more than 10TB, you can always contact their sales department, which I find fantastic.
KnownHost doesn’t require you to purchase their remote storage solutions for the block storage to work to add on their flexibility. While you can add this service to their VPS, Cloud, and Dedicated Servers, you can also purchase their remote storage to use any of your other services.
KnownHost offers superior service. To start, it provides Full JetBackup Integration, selling licenses at fixed prices. It supports FTP, FTPS, SFTP, SSH & Rsync access to your backup storage space. In turn, as a customer, you can benefit from a wide range of custom backup options to ensure you have additional backup copies of your data.
You can also integrate their remote storage directly with cPanel Remote Backup sources, as they support SFTP, Rsync, and FTP integration with cPanel. Finally, they offer full FTPS support to allow you to take advantage of the integrated DirectAdmin remote backup configuration.
Conclusion
Storage is an essential feature you should check before you purchase a web hosting provider. Specific web hosts provide additional options to upgrade or scale disk space and bandwidth, which is essentially the best-case scenario. This way, you only pay for what you use, and you can always decide to scale up or down, depending on your business needs.
Still, you need also to consider backups, whether they are automated and how much they cost. Another essential component is the cloud options, meaning if you can assess your stored data from anywhere at any time.
All the above-mentioned storage hostings satisfy all these criteria and more. So, make sure to review them before you spend your resources on storage hosting.
You may also want to look at the following:
We Rated the Best 5 Windows RDP Servers Out There
We Rated the Best 5 Linux RDP Servers Out There
Our recommendations for the Best VPS Hosting Providers
You can discover new info about Best website hosting by clicking this link.
