Cloud Servers
Storage Servers
A Storage Server is a single-tenant physical machine built around very large disks, sold for capacity rather than raw CPU, and with no charge for reading your own data back out.
If you need tens or hundreds of terabytes for backups, archives or media, a storage server is usually far cheaper than object storage priced per gigabyte with a transfer fee attached. This guide covers the three tiers, the economics that make them worth it, how they are ordered, and where their limits are.
What a Storage Server Is
A Storage Server is a dedicated physical server with very large disks, allocated to you alone. Nobody else's workload shares the hardware. The design goal is capacity per dollar: plenty of memory to serve files quickly, and a great deal of disk.
There are three tiers, in increasing capacity:
| Tier | Storage | Memory | Monthly | One-time setup |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shelf | 64 TB | 64 GB RAM | US$115.00 | Yes |
| Trench | 176 TB | 128 GB RAM | US$640.00 | Yes |
| Abyss | 308 TB | 256 GB RAM | US$1,200.00 | Yes |
Each tier comes in the same two forms as our cloud servers, unmanaged or managed, and prices are shown excluding GST in your billing currency.
No Egress Fees
This is the part that saves the most money, and it is worth being precise about why.
On metered cloud storage you typically pay twice: once to store the data, and again every time you read it back. That second charge is called egress or bandwidth, and it is invisible until the month you actually need your data. Restoring a large backup, re-encoding a media library, or pulling a training dataset down repeatedly can cost more in transfer than a whole month of storage did.
Kapsule Storage Servers have no egress fees. Read, restore and move your data as often as you like without a per-gigabyte transfer charge. Your monthly cost is the monthly price, and it does not move because you had a bad week and needed your backups.
The right way to compare a storage server against metered object storage is to price a full restore, not a quiet month. Work out what it would cost to pull all of your data back down once, then add that to twelve months of storage. That is the number a storage server has to beat, and it usually does comfortably.
What People Use Them For
- Offsite and secondary backups for your other servers, sites and databases, including a second copy of what your cloud servers already back up.
- Long-term archives: records, logs and media you are required to keep but rarely touch.
- Media libraries of video, images and audio that would be expensive to hold on per-gigabyte storage.
- Large datasets for analytics or machine learning that you pull down repeatedly, where transfer fees would dominate the bill.
How They Are Different From Cloud Servers
| Cloud Servers | Storage Servers | |
|---|---|---|
| Hardware | Virtual, shared or dedicated vCPU | Single-tenant physical machine |
| Sized for | CPU and memory | Disk capacity |
| Provisioning | Immediate, subject to stock | To order, not instant |
| Setup fee | None | One-time |
| Live resize in KPanel | Yes | No |
| Regions | Six offered regions | Bare-metal locations, subject to stock |
Storage Servers cannot be resized in place. The resize screen in KPanel is for cloud tiers only, and says so: "Bare-metal, storage and GPU servers are changed by ordering a new server." Pick a tier that covers your growth for the period you are planning, because moving up later means ordering the larger machine and copying your data across.
Ordering One
- Sign in to KPanel.
- Open Store in the left sidebar, then follow the servers section to the compute plans page, or go directly to
/plans/compute?group=storage. - Use the Unmanaged and Managed toggle to choose which form you want.
- Each tier shows its capacity, memory, monthly price and one-time setup fee.
Because these are physical machines rather than virtual ones, they are provisioned to order rather than in seconds. Availability depends on the bare-metal stock in each location. We keep you updated by email while the machine is being prepared.
The Setup Fee
A Storage Server carries a one-time setup fee at checkout in addition to the recurring monthly price, because a physical machine has to be built and provisioned for you.
- It is charged once, at provisioning, and never appears on a renewal.
- It is shown as its own line at checkout, labelled Setup (one-time), and it gets its own receipt.
- If your account currency is NZD, GST applies to the setup fee as well.
Cloud Server Pricing and GST covers exactly how recurring and one-off charges appear on your invoices.
Choosing a Tier
Work from what you actually hold today, then add the growth you expect over the life of the machine. Two rules of thumb:
- Do not size to the byte. Filesystems, snapshots and the copies you make while reorganising all take room. Leave real headroom.
- Count your retention, not your data. If you keep 30 daily backups of a 2 TB dataset, your storage requirement is driven by the retention policy, not by the 2 TB.
If you are unsure, tell us your backup volumes and retention and we will size it with you rather than guess.
Troubleshooting
I need more capacity than Abyss. Talk to us. Multiple machines, or a different arrangement, may fit better than trying to stretch a single tier.
Can I use one as a backup target for my cloud servers? Yes, and it is one of the most common uses. Note that it is separate from the automatic daily offsite backups your cloud servers already have, described in Cloud Server Backups. A storage server is your own second copy, under your own control.
How quickly can I have one? Not instantly. They are physical machines subject to bare-metal stock. Ask us before you commit to a date.
Can I resize from Shelf to Trench? Not in place. You would order the larger machine and copy your data across.
To talk through capacity, redundancy or which tier fits, ask Kora inside KPanel or email support@kapsulehost.com. Our New Zealand team will help you size it properly rather than sell you the biggest one.