Calculator Inputs
Example Data Table
| Garden Use Case | Stored Data (GB) | Transfer Out (GB/mo) | GET (mo) | PUT (mo) | Recommended Tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seasonal plant photos + notes | 80 | 10 | 120,000 | 8,000 | Standard |
| IoT soil sensors and irrigation logs | 250 | 45 | 600,000 | 110,000 | Standard / Infrequent |
| Drone mapping and time-lapse videos | 1200 | 180 | 1,200,000 | 90,000 | Infrequent |
| Historic archives for compliance and research | 5000 | 25 | 90,000 | 6,000 | Archive |
Formula Used
- Average stored data over the period uses geometric growth across N months: avg = S0 × ( ((1+g)^N − 1) / (N×g) ), where g is monthly growth rate.
- Versioning increases storage: S_versioned = avg × (1 + versioning%/100).
- Compression/dedupe reduces stored size: S_compressed = S_versioned × (1 − compression%/100).
- Effective billed storage applies multipliers: S_effective = S_compressed × tier_mult × region_mult × redundancy_mult.
- Monthly total adds components: total = storage + transfer + requests + encryption + overhead + support%.
How to Use This Calculator
- Enter your estimated stored data from garden photos, logs, and sensor exports.
- Set a retention period and expected growth rate for the next season or year.
- Choose a tier, region, and redundancy level that matches your access needs.
- Adjust pricing fields to match your provider’s published rates.
- Press Submit to see a breakdown above the form.
- Download CSV or PDF for proposals, budgeting, or grant tracking.
Professional Notes
Garden Data Footprint Drivers
Modern gardens generate more than photos. Soil probes can log moisture, temperature, EC, and pH every 5–15 minutes, creating thousands of rows per week. Camera traps and time‑lapse rigs add large files quickly. This estimator treats storage as a growing dataset, not a fixed bucket, so your budget stays realistic.
Sizing Storage Across a Season
Start with today’s stored gigabytes, then apply an annual growth percentage that matches planting cycles and device rollouts. For example, adding two sensor zones and weekly drone scans can push growth above 20% annually. The calculator uses an average‑over‑months approach so the storage charge reflects gradual expansion instead of an inflated end‑state.
Requests and Workflow Patterns
Request costs are small per unit but scale with automation. Dashboards may refresh every minute, producing many reads. Upload pipelines produce writes during irrigation events or harvest reporting. Enter monthly GET and PUT counts to capture these patterns. If you batch uploads and cache dashboards, request totals typically drop without changing your dataset.
Transfer, Sharing, and Remote Access
Outbound transfer rises when you share reports with a team, sync devices, or run remote model training on images. Estimate transfer per month using previous downloads or expected collaborator activity. Region multipliers help represent typical differences in network pricing. If your workflows mostly stay inside one platform, transfer often becomes a secondary driver.
Cost Controls and Governance
Tiers, redundancy, and versioning provide levers for durability and compliance. Archive tiers reduce cost for long‑term evidence such as pesticide logs and research baselines. Multi‑region redundancy improves resiliency for critical operations. Versioning supports rollback but increases stored copies. Use compression where formats allow, and add a fixed overhead line for gateways, monitoring, or backups.
FAQs
What does “effective billed storage” mean?
It is your average stored data after adding versioning, subtracting compression, and applying tier, region, and redundancy multipliers. This value is used to compute the billed GB‑month storage charge.
How should I estimate monthly GET and PUT requests?
Use logs from your app, device dashboards, or provider metrics. If unavailable, estimate: dashboard refreshes × users × days for GET, and device uploads × files per upload for PUT.
Why is growth applied over months instead of one final size?
Storage usually increases gradually. Averaging across the period avoids overstating costs by charging the final month’s size for every month. It better matches real billing behavior.
When should I choose an archive tier?
Choose archive for infrequently accessed garden records, historic imagery, or compliance evidence. It reduces storage cost but may increase retrieval time and, in some providers, retrieval fees.
Does compression always reduce my bill?
Compression helps when data is compressible, like logs and CSVs. Already‑compressed formats like JPEG or MP4 may see minimal gains. Test a sample set before assuming a high percentage.
Can I use this for comparing different providers?
Yes. Enter each provider’s published rates in the pricing inputs and keep your workload assumptions the same. The breakdown highlights which component changes most between options.