Consumer Storage Service Provider - Part 1

I've written much about Enterprise Storage Service Provider. The reason behind storage service for corporations are: 1) an urgency in corporate world to backup and be prepared for disaster especially after 9/11, 2) public companies are looking for ways to be resilient even after a plane crashing into their headquarters (how ironic).

Consumer Storage Service provider is for mass market. These providers are typical web start-up. They do not require a large investment or VC backing like Enterprise Storage Service Provider. But they need a team of dedicated professionals and reliable storage. What do these Consumer SSPs need?

Since Consumer SSP will serve thousands or tens of thousands of subscribers. They can not afford to sign-up one subscriber at a time, nor they can afford to customize their service to one particular subscriber. They need to automate everything from sign-up, service provisioning, billing, and even service termination. The sample web application from my earlier blog is merely service description. The back-end system is a wholely differnt ball game.

Today, I'm going to elaborate the setup for a Consumer Storage Service Provider. What do you need to start a CSSP (other than a business plan)?
1. Storage - to host customers' data
2. Web server - to sign-up, service subscribers - the door to storage for subscribers
3. Backend server - to charge subscribers, to activate subscribers that register and pay for service, to terminate subscribers that do not pay or stop or pause the service.

#1 - Storage - Wasabi Systems may have a single point of failure, as long as your service level agreement is not 4-9s (99.99%), Wasabi Systems product would do. It may be wise to double up the storage for premium subscribers (if budget is not to tight).

If SLA is 99.99% - you will need other iSCSI storage systems. There are many players out there that provide iSCSI storage. Some of these new players are Huawei, Rasilient, and Rackable Systems. These companies equip their offerings with dual controllers (no single point of failure). So they provide good enough systems for Consumer SSP with 99.99% SLA.

#2 - Web server - any Intel-based or AMD-based Linux or Windows server will do. My sample Storage Service web application runs on Apache/MySQL. If there are many subscribers, Consumer SSP will need to setup a dedicated MySQL server with multiple Apache-based web servers. In the beginning, you only need two servers.

#3 - Backend server - same as above, PC-based or server-based running any operating system will do fine. Sign-up, activation, billing, and termination can be done automatically on this PC.

Sign-up is a feature on the web application. However, activation/termination are backend software's features. After sign-up request is being submitted. A transaction is delivered to the backend server. Then backend server requests authorization for subscribers' credit card before proceed to activate the service. Once payment is confirmed, backend software will activate that particular subscriber. But if payment can not be processed, charge collector (backend software) will send a notification to that subscriber and then send a block to non-pay accounts.

As for billing, administrator has to verify data integrity and create revenue report. Typically Consumer SSP will sign a revenue-sharing deal with ISPs in that market. So revenue report is required for bill settlement with ISPs.

Backend systems (workstation) for Consumer SSP will need the following:
3.1 Intel-based or AMD-based PC workstation
3.2 Windows or Linux operating system
3.3 Mysql installation on Backend systems
3.4 Replication setup from a production server/storage -> fail-over/reports engine server
3.5 Once everything crashed, this client can be used to do fail-over/reports engine server

I'll talk about Consumer SSP marketing in the next blog.