BackBlaze is the bare bones, $ 7348, 135TB Pod for backup storage on the cheap

Devin Coldewey is a Seattle-based writer and photographer. He wrote for the TechCrunch network since 2007. Some posts, it would like you to read: the perils of externalization of knowledge | Generation I | Surveillant society | Select two | Frame war | User manifesto | Our great sin his personal site — coldewey. cc. ? Read More

We reviewed the BackBlaze in cloud-based backup system way back in 2008, when the $ 5 for unlimited storage to be sounded as a Christmas gift. Since then business has matured somewhat, but one thing they nailed, possibly more important is the scale of the equipment. With the cloud backup services and media, firing on all cylinders, storage space is more valuable than ever, and the provision of terabytes and petabytes of space was becoming increasingly important for new companies.

In 2009 BackBlaze kindly advise all the specifications said design for their "storage Pod," custom server unit, which they claimed made their prices possible (Director Gleb Budman explains in this Ignite talk). And now they do it again. I want to build your own ultra low cost storage solution for less than Dell or HP? They've done the legwork and provided a breakdown into parts.

Many elements from previous versions are no longer available, which makes things for them and for lovers seeking cloud. New parts will probably die in two years or so, but if anything the initial cost (s) will go down and the ability to go up, while the other part (motherboard, memory, etc.) will be enough.

The primary schema is micro-ATX Board with common array ports and slots. There are six SATA ports, but they are not used to store itself. Instead, BackBlaze four PCI Express SATA, and then three of their four ports are routed to multipliers with five ports — a lot of numbers at the end add up to 45 drives in one case. There are two 760-Watt PSU, 4 GB of RAM and one hard drive 160 GB for the system itself. I thought that last bit extravagant and both said, BackBlaze Gleb Budman assured me this is very much a cheap drive, you can get a new one right now (~ $ 40). All this takes place inside the fire-engine red custom case made ProtoCase, which is the single most expensive component of $ 350.

Inevitable consequence of greater magnitude unit failures, but this is something that can be managed using redundancy in a huge scale, and of course there are fundamental differences of algorithms and software that make to avoid data loss as quickly and easily. I think if a SATA controller had to go rogue (or something, I don't know), even 135TB lost data is managed, if you have taken the proper precautions. And far more likely that here (disks), does not seem to be any additional risk.

The advantages of lower equipment cost is obvious, but I think there is something more than saving money. As the master of your domain counters for something: controls the equipment as a result, many companies don't BackBlaze, and they are not beholden to, say, Amazon or Dell for support or maintenance. Plus all of the easily replaceable and they developed a system (it's really very simple, not easy), so that they know this top down. Maybe it's that the coherence of the forward thinking that almost got them bought?

You can read much more technical details (for example, change the file system and cluster statistics) in BackBlaze blog. I build my own systems, and while I do not have the eight Grand lying about to replicate to the child, I love their style.

BackBlaze is an online storage solution with a single click. He tried to minimize user intervention needed to create the backup. BackBlaze online backup tool that allows Windows ...

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