Crowded VPS - Add second disk just for uploads?

[ProSkill]

My forum runs on a VPS and it's running out of space. I've maxed out the 100 GB limit. In any case, I am wondering if I add a second disk to the server if I can use that to store uploads? Does anyone know if this is possible?  Basically use: 

/dev/sdb1

for uploads. 

[Martin A.]

As long as the mounted disk is read- and writable by Apache/nginx, it can be used as storage. Just set up a new storage configuration in the ACP that points to this location.

Or you can use Wasabi as S3 storage. 

 

[ProSkill]

9 hours ago, Martin A. said:

As long as the mounted disk is read- and writable by Apache/nginx, it can be used as storage. Just set up a new storage configuration in the ACP that points to this location.

Or you can use Wasabi as S3 storage. 

 

Is there a tutorial for this by chance? I don't see a way to point to a secondary disk, only the primary disk where the forum software lives. 

[Joel R]

Are you concerned about content like forum attachments or files? You can set up Amazon S3 or an S3 compliant service to offload the storage.  I have several hundred gigabytes of content that I am moving to Wasabi.  

[ProSkill]

2 hours ago, Joel R said:

Are you concerned about content like forum attachments or files? You can set up Amazon S3 or an S3 compliant service to offload the storage.  I have several hundred gigabytes of content that I am moving to Wasabi.  

I am using it solely for attachments. I tried S3 before but it was VERY expensive I was spending $400 - $500 per month for hosting and bandwidth fees. Also, AWS isn't very DMCA friendly, in other words, if you get a few per year that can be enough for them to suspend your account, and if they do that you may lose all access to your content, even if it's over something stupid like an avatar image. 

[ProSkill]

Put simply my question is: Is it possible to add a secondary hard drive to a VPS to store attachments? 

[The Old Man]

I don't really see how you could do that since it's not a dedicated server, a VPS is still sharing a server with others, so normally you would just upgrade to the next suitable package your webhost provides. Most will negotiate a deal with you depending upon how long you've been with them.

That said here's a few guides that came up in a quick search...

https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/website/ssh/using-a-secondary-hard-drive-on-a-dedicated-server

https://my.bluehost.com/hosting/help/dedi-vps-addon-storage

1 hour ago, ProSkill said:

I tried S3 before but it was VERY expensive I was spending $400 - $500 per month for hosting and bandwidth fees.

Ouch! That doesn't seem right, especially for what sounds like under a 100GB of storage. Perhaps something was wrong. The first 50TB a month of storage is just 2.3 cents per GB, so that is $2.30 a month for 100GB of storage. S3 can get expensive in terms of requests and data in/out if you don't configure a CDN like Cloudfront and cache those files. Perhaps it was bad bots directly hammering your S3 bucket? I find Cloudflare useful for that, it sits between them and your CDN and protects it with the speedy DNS too. Your CDN in turn caches your S3 bucket.

[ProSkill]

1 hour ago, The Old Man said:

I don't really see how you could do that since it's not a dedicated server, a VPS is still sharing a server with others, so normally you would just upgrade to the next suitable package your webhost provides. Most will negotiate a deal with you depending upon how long you've been with them.

That said here's a few guides that came up in a quick search...

https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/website/ssh/using-a-secondary-hard-drive-on-a-dedicated-server

https://my.bluehost.com/hosting/help/dedi-vps-addon-storage

Ouch! That doesn't seem right, especially for what sounds like under a 100GB of storage. Perhaps something was wrong. The first 50TB a month of storage is just 2.3 cents per GB, so that is $2.30 a month for 100GB of storage. S3 can get expensive in terms of requests and data in/out if you don't configure a CDN like Cloudfront and cache those files. Perhaps it was bad bots directly hammering your S3 bucket? I find Cloudflare useful for that, it sits between them and your CDN and protects it with the speedy DNS too. Your CDN in turn caches your S3 bucket.

1. I am at the highest VPS package that my host has, and my options are either move to a dedicated server (added expense, plus hassle to move), or figure out how to add additional disk space for attachments. I actually just setup Wasabi as mentioned by someone else in this thread. I'll see how that works. 

2. I'll check them out, I did a search google but I wasn't able to find anything relevant to what I was doing. 

3. That was in reference to a different, larger forum that I own. I wasn't using a CDN so I think that contributed to it, I also didn't notice any real performance improvements so I just got a larger dedicated server. 

[Martin A.]

On 5/26/2019 at 7:56 PM, ProSkill said:

Is there a tutorial for this by chance? I don't see a way to point to a secondary disk, only the primary disk where the forum software lives. 

How to set it up in the ACP, or your server?

If the additional harddrive is mounted to /media/hddLabel, and your webserver have read and write permissions to the drive, this is how you set it up. You'll find this in ACP > Files (Just below the "Dashboard" menu item) > "Storage Settings" button > Configurations tab > Create new

As you run your own VPS, I assume you know how to mount the HDD.

[bfarber]

Personally, I would encourage you to consider using Amazon S3 (or similar) for storing your files instead of a secondary disk. If you're already having to set up a new storage configuration and move the files, I would just move to S3 entirely.

But if you were looking to mount a new drive and move your files there, you can as Martin A. has pointed out. You add a new file storage configuration in the AdminCP, then set the file storage methods you want to use it (you will be asked if you want to move your files - you can either do this manually or just say yes and let the software do it in the background).

[The Old Man]

Me too! Also that option to be able to choose whether to have IPS4 move the files or not is really at times, especially when you're tinkering with S3 features and buckets. 😀

[ProSkill]

14 hours ago, Martin A. said:

How to set it up in the ACP, or your server?

If the additional harddrive is mounted to /media/hddLabel, and your webserver have read and write permissions to the drive, this is how you set it up. You'll find this in ACP > Files (Just below the "Dashboard" menu item) > "Storage Settings" button > Configurations tab > Create new

As you run your own VPS, I assume you know how to mount the HDD.

Thank you! This is what I was looking for. Though, I took the general advise and moved to Wasabi. I'll try that out for a few months.