The following is the suggestion I made to Linode.com and the official response I received as well.

The Suggestion:

Hello. I am enjoying my linode and your service is superb. I understand how Linodes are sharing the same host machine, which has limited resources, hence the limitation for available ‘extras’ or upgrades such as HDD space, RAM, etc. I am wanting additional hard drive space, however the ‘extra’ space you give as an option isn’t sufficient. I am curious, why you do not offer additional space through a NAS (Network Area Storage) device, or a SAN (Storage Area Network) device. This would allow you to have external storage space that is not limited to the host machine’s limitations. Then your clients would have the ability to purchase lots of storage for cheap, and mount it as additional space in our Linodes, (as well as I’m sure you could configure your Virtual Host Software to include the space on the SAN/NAS and therefore allow it to be transparently passed through to the virtual client instances running on your hosts.

I only bring this up as I am currently fine with the linode 360 I’m on in terms of memory and processing capabilities, however the storage is limited. I understand I can purchase ‘extras’ of a few GB, however 6GB is hardly an upgrade. Even if I were to purchase your top Linode a 1440 just to obtain a remotely decent amount of HDD space, I would be then have processing power and memory which would be overkill for my current application needs. So, with that, I again just want to know what other options we have as clients, to upgrading the storage space reasonably priced, without having to upgrade my ‘Linode’ plan, as I would not currently need or utilize the additional memory, or RAM.

Personally, I believe that you could offer additional SAN/NAS storage for a decent price. You could potentially create two array’s for your client’s choosing. A High speed array, with 15,000RPM hdd’s via Fiber SAN, for those clients who were in need of very fast responding storage. (Of course since a SAN would be more expensive than NAS, and 15,000 RPM HDD’s are pricey, you could charge more per GB with your SAN array, than a NAS array.)

For those, such as myself who are in need of more storage, but with speed requirements not so demanding, you would be able to create a NAS array with standard 7,200RPM HDD’s in your choice of RAID configuration, as these general consumer HDD’s can be cheap and affordable, and you can now purchase 1.5TB drives for ~$120. You would then be able to lease space out for close to cost, but with a little profit, allowing you to continue to expand the array, and upgrade the drives to keep in sync with Moore’s Law.

Well, those are my thoughts. Please consider them openly, as I believe this would add lots of value to your services you offer, and help you bring in additional clients, plus help you in the future to possibly retain clients (I’m not saying anything about myself quiting, and I’m sure your client turnover rate is significantly lower than your competitors, as you do provide a great service, but I’m just suggesting this could do nothing but improve what your clients think of your service, and what potential clients would see in a future with your companies services as they are considering signing up.

I hope that these thoughts will not be cast aside as something of naught with a canned response suggesting that Linode does not offer or plan on offering such services, as I took a bit of time in professionally writing out my suggestion to you.

Thank you for your time,

Tanner Williamson

The Response:

from support@linode.com
to Tanner Williamson
date Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 12:56 PM
subject Linode Support Ticket 81774 - Other - Services Question
mailed-by linode.com

Hello Tanner,

Not a canned response, I promise. Thank you for the suggestion.

I’ve passed along your thoughts to the owner, who is also responsible for our infrastructure and makes large decisions like this. While I can’t divulge future plans or specific details of Linode’s hardware, what I can tell you is that this is something we have looked at, but not 100% in the form you suggest.

We are fully aware that storage is one of the resources that is usually considered limiting (for some applications), and you are not the first customer to request such an improvement. We did recently increase everyone’s storage by one third, and please know that we are not asleep at the wheel when it comes to storage. There are infrastructure concerns that we must struggle with, especially since we work with four different datacenters.

Nonetheless, I will pass your ideas along to our infrastructure guru. You are not going unheard.

Yours,

Jed Smith
Developer/Systems Administrator
Linode, LLC
jsmith@linode.com

Followup Response:

Thanks for the blog hit, too. :)

-Jed

You’re welcome Jed.