Solved Rough estimate of costs for using Google Buckets Storage for 3CX call recordings ?

[PaulBC]

Hi,

so, we have a clients 3CX hosted by 3CX cloud. We understand this comes with 250hrs of call recording storage so we need to setup an additional location for storage beyond the 250 hours.

Google Bucket Storage is shown as an option, and there is a document showing how to set this up.

Questions !

1) how does the client access the call recordings that are backed up to the bucket ? ie are they still searchable from the 3CX ?

2) rough estimate of costs please to store these recordings with google bucket ? for example if the customer were to generate 250 hours of recordings every month what would that look like in terms of costs from google ? £1 a month ? £10 a month ? £100 a month ? finding it quite hard to find real world examples and the google documentation is quite complex in this regard so looking to draw on some of your experiences please !

Thanks

 

[cobaltit]

1) The recordings are presented in the client exactly the same was as if they were not archived. This is irrespective of the archive method used.

2) It's just math and it's well documented. Slide 5 here gives you the size approximation per minute of recording. Google has calculators for pricing but ultimately it depends on a number of factors. But at the end of the day it's dirt cheap so you either so if the storage price is a concern, there's something wrong with your business model. If you are really worried about it, setup a free account with $300 credit and then there is no risk.

Cloud Storage pricing | Google Cloud

 

[PaulBC]

Thanks for the reply - point 1, that's great

Point 2 - I'm just after a rough guide to the costs and real world experience - it looks like it's minimal, ie the link you shared shows a cost of 1$ for a month at 50GB storage. However, the reason for asking for real world feedback is to see if that's realistic or if in reality, it ends up being $100 per month !

PS - where is slide 5 which you mentioned please ?

 

[cobaltit]

Whoops.. Forgot that link:

3CX Intermediate Training: 3. Call recording

And there is no bait and switch. 50GB is 50GB regardless if it's recordings or cat pictures. Ingress is free. So egress and transactions are basically all you are going to pay for. You need to use the calculator because storage pricing is based on storage type, so you might choose a different option than someone else. And if you listen to every call vs someone that only archives in case it's needed your egress is going to be higher.

 

[cobaltit]

Although now that I think about it, technically if your PBX is in GCP and your storage is in the same region I don't think you would pay any egress as far as storage is concerned as it would go from storage to your GCP instance. You would still pay for egress at GCP rates though. But again, cloud pricing is so cheap and scalable that it is really a non-factor as unless you are doing something really unusual.

 

[StefanW]

From personal experience, google storage pricing and usage is extremely cheap on a per GB metric.