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Backblaze Storage Pod 5.0

backblaze.com

61–70 of 222 posts

Re: Backblaze Storage Pod 5.0

#61
post #15
post #13

I notice that they're using a 500GB 5400RPM boot drive. Is there a need for that large of a boot drive? I would have expected that an SSD boot drive would be preferable.

Yev from Backblaze -> We don't need the boot drive to be that "large", but it's more of a pricing thing. An SSD, even at 256GB would be more expensive than those 5400RPM drives, so we just go with what's cheap :)

Amazon apparently sells a bunch of 64GB and 120GB SSDs for less than the $53 cost of your boot drive.

Re: Backblaze Storage Pod 5.0

#62
post #35

I just posted a link to an interesting blog post detailing the risks of building a storage pod [1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10541055

Isn't that basically long-form restatement that you should know what you need before spending money? The storage pods are pretty openly targeted at large-scale operations where the lower storage costs pay for a dedicated ops team and things like redundancy are handled at the software layer. Dinging them for not having hardware RAID is like buying a semi-truck and complaining that it doesn't fit in your garage.

Re: Backblaze Storage Pod 5.0

#63
post #15
post #13

I notice that they're using a 500GB 5400RPM boot drive. Is there a need for that large of a boot drive? I would have expected that an SSD boot drive would be preferable.

Yev from Backblaze -> We don't need the boot drive to be that "large", but it's more of a pricing thing. An SSD, even at 256GB would be more expensive than those 5400RPM drives, so we just go with what's cheap :)

Reliability has a cost, too. You can get a 60GB SSD for cheap (Amazon suggests it's about the same price as the slow 500GB HDD), and the SSD will fail at a much lower rate than that HDD.

Re: Backblaze Storage Pod 5.0

#64
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yev from Backblaze here -> That is boilerplate for the most part, but it's open source, have at it!

Ok I will email my attorney that "Some guy named atYevP on HN told me it was okay." ;)

Having sold a company to IBM, I can attest that this issue would be a Big Problem. {Edit: I mean for any company that used BlackBlaze diagrams labeled "proprietary."}

Re: Backblaze Storage Pod 5.0

#65
post #31

Worth pointing out (for those of you not in the storage game) that these appliances, while cool, are pretty far from state of the art. We're (Dropbox) packing up to an order of magnitude more storage into 4U. And costs aren't close, let alone the addressable throughput given that you guys just went to 10G. Serious kudos though are due for the Backblaze blog. You're all at least talking about what you're up to, which…

I thought Dropbox uses Amazon S3 not their own storage?

Re: Backblaze Storage Pod 5.0

#66
post #31

Worth pointing out (for those of you not in the storage game) that these appliances, while cool, are pretty far from state of the art. We're (Dropbox) packing up to an order of magnitude more storage into 4U. And costs aren't close, let alone the addressable throughput given that you guys just went to 10G. Serious kudos though are due for the Backblaze blog. You're all at least talking about what you're up to, which…

I thought Dropbox uses Amazon S3 not their own storage?

I guess they realized S3 was too expensive, eventually? :)

Re: Backblaze Storage Pod 5.0

#67
post #49
post #31

Worth pointing out (for those of you not in the storage game) that these appliances, while cool, are pretty far from state of the art. We're (Dropbox) packing up to an order of magnitude more storage into 4U. And costs aren't close, let alone the addressable throughput given that you guys just went to 10G. Serious kudos though are due for the Backblaze blog. You're all at least talking about what you're up to, which…

What order of magnitude? There are 60 drive chassis in 4U you can get[0][1], but even a 4TB -> 6TB drive + 15 more drives isn't exactly an order of magnitude. And they have 2 10GiB ports, though I'm sure you can work with them and get more.. It's disingenuous to call this not "state of the art" when it's really quite close, and obviously is meeting a backblaze design goal. [0]: http://www.newisys.com/Products/4600.sh…

A 96 bay 4U chassis is readily available http://www.raidinc.com/products/object-storage/ability-4u-96... but that's still not a magnitude.

Re: Backblaze Storage Pod 5.0

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok I will email my attorney that "Some guy named atYevP on HN told me it was okay." ;)

Having sold a company to IBM, I can attest that this issue would be a Big Problem. {Edit: I mean for any company that used BlackBlaze diagrams labeled "proprietary."}

A big problem for BB if they were to have open source-licensed tech and got acquired by a megacorp, or a big problem for a "kinda-sorta-licensee" of their tech once acquired?

Re: Backblaze Storage Pod 5.0

#69
post #31

Worth pointing out (for those of you not in the storage game) that these appliances, while cool, are pretty far from state of the art. We're (Dropbox) packing up to an order of magnitude more storage into 4U. And costs aren't close, let alone the addressable throughput given that you guys just went to 10G. Serious kudos though are due for the Backblaze blog. You're all at least talking about what you're up to, which…

Now that's a backhanded compliment.

Re: Backblaze Storage Pod 5.0

#70
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What order of magnitude? There are 60 drive chassis in 4U you can get[0][1], but even a 4TB -> 6TB drive + 15 more drives isn't exactly an order of magnitude. And they have 2 10GiB ports, though I'm sure you can work with them and get more.. It's disingenuous to call this not "state of the art" when it's really quite close, and obviously is meeting a backblaze design goal. [0]: http://www.newisys.com/Products/4600.sh…

you can fit 72 x 8TB pretty easily into 4u with off-the-shelf hardware. with custom-built 2.5" ssd enclosures you could probably fit more in the same space.

Can you link to the shelf / hardware? I'm curious
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