Storage solution for video site

[wxdqz]

Dear all,I am planning for a storage solution of a video website that looks like this:User Permit:+ 500 storage MB for per user.+ User can post 15 minute of videotape.Initial Storage Plan: - 10.000 - 50.000 register users ----> how many HDD & bandwidth need?Upgrade Storage Plan 1:- 100.000 register users----> how many HDD & bandwidth need?Upgrade Storage Plan 2:- 500.000 register users----> how many HDD & bandwidth need?HDD Space:Certaintly, 500MB/ user => 10.000 - 50.000 users will take 5000GB - 25000GB. However, the fact that only a part of register users use their space to post their videos. Therefore, if I buy a plan of 5000GB for 10000 users, it's a waste of resource. So, would you like to help me a good plan to prevent this issue?Bandwidth:A flexible bandwidth plan is really what I am looking for. How can I plan well it in this case?Thanks for your support!Its really hard to judge immediately how popular your site will be, as one link from digg or slashdot can suddenly drive your b/w through the roof. From experience, the best way to prepare is to make sure your selected provider has enough capacity to scale and that overages are clearly laid out ahead of time so that you aren't stuck with an unreasonable bill.A lot of mid-size video sites right now are using amazon's web services which, in essence, allow you to you only pay for what you use. So it's really cheap if you use nothing, though eventually it's more expensive than doing colo/taking on capital expenditures yourself.You also need to figure out what your average file size is, and average hit/day for that file size will give you an accurate measure for bandwidth consumption.Half million users is alot of users.. scaling really depends also how you design/build your backend, one big large filer isn't the answer, multiple smaller ones will allow better scaling and cheaper scalingIt looks like for the space and bandwidth you need colocation is really the cheapest option. It would be hard to find a host that can do this without a very customized solution. Depending on what kind of script you are planning to use. Also unmetered bandwidth is probably going to be your best option for what you are planning to do.