Background
A customer came to us to look over their bills. The first thing we checked was their cloud storage.
At the time, roughly 50–70 users were on Box.com with about 3TB of data stored. Box.com charges per user, not by storage amount—the annual spend had reached approximately $40,000 USD.
Business Challenge
Two problems stood out beyond the current bill.
Box.com pricing is per user, not per terabyte. At 50–70 seats, the annual cost had reached approximately $40,000 USD for around 3TB of data—an expensive model where headcount drives the bill regardless of how much storage is actually in use.
Second, that spend was denominated in USD—unfixed against a Canadian operating budget. Exchange movement and vendor price changes added uncertainty on top of an already costly per-seat contract.
Data was also growing at roughly 3–4TB per year. Box would not charge more for that growth directly, but the customer needed storage that could scale economically on-prem rather than continuing to pay per seat for cloud file access.
Dataforge has long recommended that businesses do what they can to move away from unfixed monthly storage costs—especially when those contracts are tied to USD. This engagement was a clear fit: they already had a suitable IT room, power, and on-site infrastructure, and they wanted core storage back under their control.
Solution
Dataforge designed and deployed a fully managed VMware vSAN system with about 100TB of fully redundant storage. Windows Server file services were configured with granular permissions and sub-permissions, capabilities Box.com could not provide.
Offsite backup to the Dataforge datacenter and quarterly tape archival were added for offline ransomware protection. The platform remains fully managed: hardware, operating systems, virtual machines, onsite and offsite backup, real-time monitoring with monthly manual review, and tracked storage usage.
Implementation
Hardware was ordered, installed, and fully tested within approximately one month. File shares, permissions, and the Windows Server filesystem were built out before any production data moved.
Migration used a sync-first approach. Existing data replicated to the vSAN cluster over several days. A final delta sync ran over a weekend; mapped drives were switched from Box.com to the new environment, and users were back at work Monday with minimal disruption.
Project Considerations
The overall plan proceeded smoothly. Two items required attention during cutover.
Some file paths exceeded Windows length limits. We used dedicated tooling to clean up long paths and reported the updated locations to affected users.
The new permission model was more restrictive than Box.com by design. A number of users needed expanded access after go-live; those requests were handled ad hoc, typically within about 15 minutes.
Environment Comparison
| Previous Environment | Current Environment |
|---|---|
| Per-seat Box.com pricing for 50–70 users; ~$40K USD/year for ~3TB—cost driven by headcount, not storage used | 100TB fully redundant vSAN cluster sized for sustained growth |
| Data growing ~3–4TB/year with no economical on-platform expansion path | Capacity and cost decoupled from per-seat cloud licensing |
| Storage spend unfixed in USD against a Canadian budget | Predictable, fully managed on-premise storage under Dataforge support |
| Limited permission model; no native Windows ACL/sub-permission control | Windows Server file services with granular permissions and sub-permissions |
| Cloud-only backup posture | Offsite backup to Dataforge datacenter plus quarterly tape archival for ransomware protection |
| File storage on Box.com only; no on-prem virtualization or server infrastructure | VMware vSAN with VMs on demand and no per-VM storage surcharges |
| Remote access via cloud platform | Fully accessible remotely—minimal change for end users |
Key Outcomes
- 67% lower monthly cost — replaced ~$40K USD/year Box.com spend with a fixed managed storage platform
- Headroom for 3–4TB/year growth — 100TB vSAN capacity without per-seat licensing or USD-denominated cloud contracts
- Granular file permissions — Windows Server ACLs and sub-permissions not available on Box.com
- Weekend cutover with sync migration — multi-day replication, delta sync, and drive remap with minimal user disruption
- Fully managed operations — hardware, OS, and VM support; onsite and offsite backup; real-time monitoring with monthly manual review
Long-Term Track Record
The system has been running well for many years. The cluster has been expanded to increase capacity and redundancy as data grew beyond the original ~3TB.
Capacity was also upgraded to support vSAN version updates that required filesystem changes. Deferring some of that storage purchase worked in the customer's favour—when expansion was needed, drive sizes were larger and the cost per GB had fallen.
The 67% savings at cutover have held as a baseline; growth has been absorbed on-platform rather than through rising per-user cloud fees or USD-denominated contracts.
“Dataforge conducted a thorough analysis of our cloud pricing and identified areas where we could significantly reduce our storage costs. They proposed an on-premise solution that allowed us to achieve substantial savings.”