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Backblaze Storage Pod 5.0

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Re: Backblaze Storage Pod 5.0

#161

Post by arca_vorago »

stanmancan wrote: post #84
jamwt wrote: 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…

You guys are able to fit 1.8PB into a single 4U? Seriously impressive..!

Only way I know how to do that is all flash storage...

Re: Backblaze Storage Pod 5.0

#162

Post by modoc »

lqdc13 wrote: post #158
budmang wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Links? We love getting feedback, especially if we're overpaying for a particular component? Gleb

I guess it depends on the requirements a lot. Are you guys set on using ECC RAM and microATX mobo? It would be much cheaper to use some sort of gaming cpu + DDR4 non-ecc RAM. For example, microatx mobo: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157... some non-ecc DDR4 ram: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231... and a cpu: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168…

For a use like this EEC RAM is worth the money.

Re: Backblaze Storage Pod 5.0

#163

Post by atYevP »

amenod wrote: post #146
atYevP wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds legit to me...

I think you are missing the point. What you say here (in HN comments) doesn't matter at all. You should fix the license accordingly - or not, if this suits you better. I agree with the parent though, if I were in busines and wanted to use your drawings, I wouldn't touch them with such a license. Even as a personal hobby project I would bug you for (official & written) permission before using any of the diagrams. Othe…

I know, just funnin' :) We're taking a look at it and will update the post/docs accordingly once we figure out which license means less work for us :)

Re: Backblaze Storage Pod 5.0

#165

Post by protomyth »

ilogik wrote: post #125
greglindahl wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."}

We are talking about the company that got a license to use json for evil

They should have sold those (framed of course) to raise money for the JSON folks (expenses and such).

Re: Backblaze Storage Pod 5.0

#166

Post by lqdc13 »

modoc wrote: post #162
lqdc13 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it depends on the requirements a lot. Are you guys set on using ECC RAM and microATX mobo? It would be much cheaper to use some sort of gaming cpu + DDR4 non-ecc RAM. For example, microatx mobo: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157... some non-ecc DDR4 ram: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231... and a cpu: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168…

For a use like this EEC RAM is worth the money.

Alright, even with ECC and much faster DDR4 ram: http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/ct16g4rfd4213

and motherboard: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157...

Re: Backblaze Storage Pod 5.0

#167

Post by mozumder »

cenal wrote: post #41
atYevP wrote: 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!

What license is it under?

There's no trade secret here, since the drawings are published. You have the rights to build anything from the drawings, provided they aren't patented, which is another issue entirely.

Copyrights here only affect the actual drawings of the product. By default, the author is granted copyrights. That means you can't publish your own book with those drawings, for example.

But to actually build the chassis, go for it.

Re: Backblaze Storage Pod 5.0

#168

Post by atYevP »

jamwt wrote: 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…

Hey! Yev from Backblaze here -> If you're still reading the thread, sorry things ended up getting a bit heated in the comments here. We like Dropbox! Our hope is that more and more companies will realize that it's a lot more entertaining to open up and chat about this stuff. Hoping Dropbox joins in soon! It'll make for a lot of interesting conversation. Either way, hope you don't feel too put out!

Re: Backblaze Storage Pod 5.0

#169

Post by tacticus »

derekp7 wrote: post #42
atYevP wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not 100% sure if we've given that any thorough testing, but the ops team is looking at most available options before building these out. That said, if they haven't tried it, they'll read this and give it a go :)

Another option -- check out the very low profile USB thumbdrives (the one I've got sticks out about 4mm or so). Or see if you can get motherboards with an internal USB or SD socket. Maybe combine this with PXE boot for initial setup (the pod gets built with a blank internal thumbdrive, and on first boot it installs the Linux kernel and initial ramdisk image on the thumbdrive). Edit: It looks like the motherboard you…

Supermicro also sells a sata plug mounted storage device it would have enough for a kernel to be loaded.

though i think a PXE or similar boot option would be a smarter move. just enough to bootstrap something to run in ram. (alternatively a minimal kernel and dedicate a section of the disks in the chassis to holding the running software (500MB x 45 with decent levels of erasure coding is a fairly minimal slice.) the kernel could then pull down the code after first boot (or updates)

Re: Backblaze Storage Pod 5.0

#170

Post by jamwt »

scurvy wrote: post #151
jamwt wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You merely state that it's just not state of the art, and to come work at dropbox. That's about all I can do. However... > This is what I mean by being disingenuous. I'm don't think disingenuous is what I'm being. Maybe I'm not being as forthcoming as you'd like. Maybe my comment wasn't useful without details I'm not providing. But I'm not lying or misrepresenting anything. So let me try to be helpful without using…

So you are using SMR drives. Wow, good luck with that. All the flash front-end caching in the world won't improve the miserable performance of those drives. I guess that's the only way to justify moving out of AWS? I'd really like to see some usage stats on your SMR clusters because so far the universal verdict is that they're terrible for anything other than WORM.

Host Managed (or Host Aware) SMR disks are fine. You need to do your own zone management using ZAC/ZBC, and throw out your filesystem. The disks all have a conventional section near LBA 0 for metadata management (e.g. indices).

Usual tradeoff--more work in software, but far less $.

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