21–30 of 76 posts
I switched from JungleDisk to Backblaze a year ago and haven't looked back. BB is amazingly fast and painless to use. On top of that the cost is insanely cheap in comparison to using AWS (which Jungle Disk uses).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
At the lowest level there are three RAID groups in each pod. Each RAID group is made of 15 drives configured in software RAID 6 with 2 parity drives. This means you can lose 2 dives and the data is entirely safe and intact. If 3 or more drives completely fail simultaneously (not just pop out of the RAID group or power down, but where that drive is lost forever, like it will never power up again) you will lose at leas…
While you are here....Why only a single boot drive? It seems like an obvious failure point, and at only $40 per drive I would think soft raid 1 would be no-brainer for reliability. Regardless though, super impressed by the work into rolling your own hardware, hope you guys continue to do well.
Does anyone know if Backblaze will ever support Linux? I've wanted to use their service for a while now, but their lack of Linux support has being a big turn down, and I don't think they have made any change in their statements regarding this 'issue'.
We would like to, we just haven't had time to get it done yet. It runs internally, but is lacking an installer and a GUI, and we would need to prioritize and choose one or more Linux distributions to launch with. Ubuntu is an obvious choice (we focus more on desktop backup than on servers). But some people also ask for CentOS and a few others. It bums me out the Linux community has not solved binary compatibility any…
No ECC?
Yes, the RAM is ECC. Here is a link: http://www.crucial.com/store/partspecs.aspx?imodule=CT25672B... The ECC RAM absolutely does find and corrects problems (we see them in the logs). However, just to be absolutely clear we would not need ECC RAM -> Backblaze checksums EVERYTHING on an end-to-end basis (mostly we use SHA-1). This is so important I cannot stress this highly enough, each and every file and portion of fi…
Does anyone know if Backblaze will ever support Linux? I've wanted to use their service for a while now, but their lack of Linux support has being a big turn down, and I don't think they have made any change in their statements regarding this 'issue'.
We would like to, we just haven't had time to get it done yet. It runs internally, but is lacking an installer and a GUI, and we would need to prioritize and choose one or more Linux distributions to launch with. Ubuntu is an obvious choice (we focus more on desktop backup than on servers). But some people also ask for CentOS and a few others. It bums me out the Linux community has not solved binary compatibility any…
please submit the actual source next time: http://blog.backblaze.com/2011/07/20/petabytes-on-a-budget-v...
Running LVM over raid 6 volumes is the 'standard' approach of many enterprise storage deployments. The 'magic' in a good RAID6 implementation is what it does when things go wrong, and lots of things do go wrong. The checksumming is great too.
At some point you can dump the sheet metal on the 'pods', just build your own rack unit. If you look at the 'big iron' systems from NetApp, EMC, and others you will see they make one big enclosure then can install simpler systems within that enclosure. What this buys you is that you can distribute enclosure services into the big box and take it off the individual boxes. That gives you better cost efficiencies. And as you point out your system can run with fewer fans, so you can put a couple of largish three phase fans in the big enclosure (dead simple and very reliable) and use them to push the air through all the other boxes. (or pull it). Then add an android tablet for the 'door' of the enclosure that tells you drive status, etc and you're practically a player in the storage game :-)
Does anyone know if Backblaze will ever support Linux? I've wanted to use their service for a while now, but their lack of Linux support has being a big turn down, and I don't think they have made any change in their statements regarding this 'issue'.
We would like to, we just haven't had time to get it done yet. It runs internally, but is lacking an installer and a GUI, and we would need to prioritize and choose one or more Linux distributions to launch with. Ubuntu is an obvious choice (we focus more on desktop backup than on servers). But some people also ask for CentOS and a few others. It bums me out the Linux community has not solved binary compatibility any…
I've been looking for an off-site backup solution for a (nerdy and technically competent) home user for years, and yours is the only one that I could afford (poor recent BA here).
Please?! I would pay $10 a month (probably more, really) for that. Even if you don't want to support it, could you do it just for me? It'll be our little secret!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We would like to, we just haven't had time to get it done yet. It runs internally, but is lacking an installer and a GUI, and we would need to prioritize and choose one or more Linux distributions to launch with. Ubuntu is an obvious choice (we focus more on desktop backup than on servers). But some people also ask for CentOS and a few others. It bums me out the Linux community has not solved binary compatibility any…
I don't know how many other folks feel this way, but I would kill for a GUI-less version of your client. I'd love to configure XML files, or some (any!) analog. I've been looking for an off-site backup solution for a (nerdy and technically competent) home user for years, and yours is the only one that I could afford (poor recent BA here). Please?! I would pay $10 a month (probably more, really) for that. Even if you…
No ECC?
Yes, the RAM is ECC. Here is a link: http://www.crucial.com/store/partspecs.aspx?imodule=CT25672B... The ECC RAM absolutely does find and corrects problems (we see them in the logs). However, just to be absolutely clear we would not need ECC RAM -> Backblaze checksums EVERYTHING on an end-to-end basis (mostly we use SHA-1). This is so important I cannot stress this highly enough, each and every file and portion of fi…
Have you tried using ZFS on one of these?